Heart Disease and Depression
Heart disease is the world's leading cause of death and the risk of heart disease is double in people with depression. Depressed patients, who suffered heart attacks, will be four times more likely to die within six months as their non-depressed counterparts. If heart disease is the loud boisterous attention-grabber, depression is the slow insidious operator working inside of the body. Anyone will get into depression, but research over the past two decades indicates that people with heart disease are more likely to suffer from depression than are healthy people, and that people with depression are at greater risk for developing heart disease. Several studies have suggested that people with depression but healthy are more likely to develop heart disease than people who are not depressed. Women are at particular risk; according to a new study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. After studying on various men and women over a period of six years, researchers concluded that women who suffer depression would more likely to have risk factors for heart disease. Specifically, the study found that depressed women would twice as likely to have metabolic syndrome and a condition in which at least three of five known risk factors for heart disease are present. In case of depressed men in the study didn't show any increase in metabolic syndrome.
And also studies are indicating that heart disease can follow depression. Psychological distress will cause rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, and faster blood clotting. It is also lead to elevated insulin and cholesterol levels. People who suffered depression will be slowed down and still have high levels of stress hormones. Depression can increase the work of the heart. As high levels of stress hormones are indicating a fight or flight reaction, the body's metabolism is diverted away from the kind of tissue repair needed in heart disease. Apart from the cause, the combination of depression and heart disease is associated with increased sickness and death, so that taking effective treatment of depression is very important. Pharmacological and cognitive-behavioral therapy treatments for depression are relatively well developed and play an important role on falling an adverse impact of depression. With the initiation of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors to treat depression, more medically ill patients can be treated without the complicating cardiovascular side effects of the previous medicine available.
Exercise is the potential pathway to reducing both depression and risk of heart disease. Attending an exercise-training program will be more comparable to treatment with an antidepressant medication (a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) for improving depressive symptoms in older adults diagnosed with major depression. And also exercise is a major protective factor against heart disease. Treatment for depression can help manage both heart disease and depression; it will improve the chances for survival and a better quality of life. Finding the symptoms of depression can help improve the chances for early intervention before it can aggravate a heart condition or lead to more serious problems, as well as speed the recovery of a person who has suffered a stroke or heart attack.