A new study in JAMA revealed that for people with less-than-healthy hearts, mental stress beat out physical stress as a predictor of fatal and non-fatal heart attacks and deaths from cardiovascular disease. Patients underwent tests to see how their heart reacted to both physical and mental stress, and those who experienced ischemia (reduced blood flow to the heart muscles) as a reaction to mental stress were much more likely to suffer a heart attack or die of cardiovascular disease in the years that followed.
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