I am frequently asked by my patients if stress may have caused the stroke. This is a great questions that affect may patients. 

Before we will dive into that, lets discuss why nature created stress. The main purpose of life is survival and stress was designed to help us survive. Normal stress in nature occurs when there is a threat to life and we need to escape it. Typically, it is very short lived. We either escape the threat or not.

When you feel threatened, your brain sends a message to your adrenal glands, which then produce hormones, including adrenalin and cortisol, that put you into 'fight or flight' mode.

The physiological reactions to stress are: elevation of blood pressure to supply muscles with blood to aid the escape, raise in glucose to supply nutrients to the muscles, raise cholesterol for repair, dilation of the pupils to improve vision, and an increase in clotting to prevent bleeding out due to trauma.  Again, this response should be temporary. Our body is not designed to be permanently under stress.

Moving to the modern world, most of the population is under chronic stress due to their job, money, relationships, general life, etc. Our body does not know the difference between that stress and the stress of somebody attacking us. The response is the same, only this time chronic stress causes sustained elevation of blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood thickness.

Of course, at some point our body is not able to adjust to stress anymore. It breaks down, which causes damage of the vital organs. Our body is designed to protect our brain, heart and kidneys. So, when damage occurs in those organs, it means that the body has run out of resources to compensate.

The short answer to the above question is yes, stress causes strokes. A study has shown that Type A personality traits were associated with a two-fold increase in stroke risk. Living with chronic stress increased stroke risk almost four-fold. Experiencing a major life event over the previous eight months resulting in chronic stress was a strong risk factor for stroke.

Having a Type A personality, being a current or past smoker, and drinking two or more energy drinks a day doubled the odds of stroke. (J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2012;83:11 1104-1111)

Now the question is how to detect if the body is under stress and we will discuss that in one of next posts.