Is Defensiveness Damaging Your Heart?

By Mary Kyle Blogger

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Stress. It’s everywhere. No matter where you turn, we seem to live a life filled with stress. Some stressful events may also trigger deep feelings of the need for self-preservation or defensiveness.

Most of us have experienced feeling defensive at some point of time in our lives. Often it comes as a response to a less than perfect evaluation at work, or perhaps a criticism which we viewed as unfair, or unwarranted, from someone who didn’t have all the facts. Regardless of the source, defensiveness is a powerful self-preservation emotion. Unfortunately, just as stress is not a heart healthy emotion, recent research indicates feelings of defensiveness may also be equally damaging to your heart, especially for women.

A recent Canadian study found that defensiveness may be damaging to heart health of certain groups of people. The study was conducted by researchers from the Université de Montréal and the Montreal Heart Institute who worked with researchers at Université du Québec à Montréal and McGill University. The study followed a group of 199 men and women between the ages of 20 and 64 years of age. All participants were healthy at the start of the study and all participants were employed. More women participated in the study than men, with 118 participants being women and 81 men.

During the course of the study, participants were required to complete four different stressful assignments. Each assignment or task varied in the amount of stress and defensive reactions to the stress which they were designed to invoke. The tasks ranged from a neutral stress situation to aggressive to controversial and adversarial. Each subsequent task was more stressful than the previously completed task. For example, the first task was the least stressful or threatening with participants merely reading a geography text about Antarctica. This was read in front of another participant of the same gender. From neutral reading, the tasks progressed to scripted role-playing (Tasks 2 and 3) in which the participants sometimes found themselves in very aggressive situations. The last task involved a free form open debate on abortion, which can be very heated and controversial.

During each of the tasks, participants were monitored for changes in heart rate, blood pressure levels and cortisol (our major stress hormone) in saliva, all of which are potentially damaging to heart health. Researchers found that two groups of participants, women and older men, reacted more defensively and negatively to the stressful tasks. The groups were specifically found to have higher levels of stress indicators as evidenced by endocrine, autonomic and cardiovascular responses to the various tasks. Women with the strongest defensive reactions were found to have increases in their heart rate as well as elevated blood pressure. Interestingly, it was not strong defensive reactions that produced negative results in older men but lower defensive reactions. Older men whose defensive reactions were low were found to have increased cardiovascular rates.

Although researchers indicate that more studies are required to determine the long-term impact defensiveness plays with respect to the development of heart disease, they believe that women with strong defensive tendencies may be at a greater risk for cardiovascular disease than others.

Complete study results have been published in the Journal of Psychophysiology.

Until next time, here’s wishing you a healthy heart.

Sources:
Definition: Cortisol, MedicineNet.com, http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=3786
Men and women respond differently to stress. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 23, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/03/100323121755.htm
Karine Lévesque, D. S. Moskowitz, Jean-Claude Tardif, Gilles Dupuis, Bianca D'antono. Physiological stress responses in defensive individuals: Age and sex matter. Psychophysiology, 2010; 47 (2): 332 DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2009.00943.x

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.