According to a recent study, researchers who examined data from more than 500,000 people between the ages of 18 and 49 found that young adults who experience sadness or depression are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease (CVD) and have a heart attack. Health is more likely to deteriorate. The findings support a growing body of research linking CVD to depression in young and middle-aged individuals and imply that the relationship may begin in adolescence. The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, also found that young adults who self-reported days of feeling depressed or having poor mental health had higher rates of heart attack, stroke, and heart disease risk factors than their peers. was higher than that of peers. mental health issues.
“When you’re stressed, anxious, or depressed, you may feel overwhelmed, and your heart rate and blood pressure increase. It’s also common that feeling down can lead to smoking, drinking, sleeping less, and not exercising.” poor lifestyle choices like being physically inactive—all adverse conditions that negatively affect your heart,” says Garima Sharma, MBBS, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine and senior author of the study. Huh.
Sharma and colleagues looked at data from 593,616 adults who participated in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, a self-reported, nationally representative survey conducted between 2017 and 2020. The survey included questions about whether they had ever been told they had a depressive disorder. the number of days they experienced poor mental health in the past month (0 days, 1–13 days or 14–30 days), whether they had a heart attack, stroke, or chest pain, and whether they had heart disease had risk factors for
Risk factors include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, being overweight/obese, smoking, diabetes, and poor physical activity and diet. People who had two or more of these risk factors were considered to have sub-optimal heart health. One in five adults reported having depression or feeling low often, with the study suggesting that higher rates may have occurred during the last year of the study, which was the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the percentage of US adults who experienced depression or anxiety increased from 36.4% to 41.5% during the first year of the pandemic, with the largest increase among those aged 18 to 29 .
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The study showed that, overall, the longer the number of days people felt sad, the more likely they were to have heart disease and poorer heart health. Compared to those who did not report any poor mental health days in the past 30 days, participants who reported 13 poor mental health days were 1.5 times more likely to develop CVD, while participants who reported 14 or more days Participants with poor mental health had a twofold difference. The association between poor mental health and CVD did not differ significantly by gender or urban/rural status. Or says Adoma Kwapong, MD, MPH, postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins Cicarone Center for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease and lead author of the study. “Our study shows we need to prioritize mental health among young adults. is needed and perhaps increase screening and monitoring of heart disease in people with mental health conditions and vice versa to improve overall heart health.”