The way that people react to stress can have a bigger impact on their life and their health compared to how much stress they actually experience, according to a study.
The research found that people can encounter several stressful incidents in a single day, but keep their heart healthy as long as they have a good attitude towards stressors and difficult situations.
Stress and negative emotions can have a direct impact on our health, increasing the risk of conditions such as heart disease. However, the way in which this happens is unclear.
The researchers looked into heart rate variability, to see if this held the link between stress and heart conditions.
It was found that people with higher heart rate variation were less likely to develop heart disease or to die prematurely.
The study used data from over 900 participants, gathered through cardiograms and daily phone interviews.
The researchers looked at how people self-reported the stress of their individual days, and the general emotions that they felt throughout the day.
The participants reported that just under half of their days were stressful.
Those who found their days more stressful and experienced greater spikes in negative emotions were found to have a lower heart rate variability.
The conclusion that was drawn is that “a person’s perceptions and emotional reactions to stressful events are more important than exposure to stress,” according to the study author.
A higher heart rate variability, it would seem, shows an ability to react and deal with stressful events better than a low heart rate variability. It doesn’t matter how many stressors someone faces, as long as they can deal with each one well.
This is why meditation and mental stress management techniques are important. A better state of mind can help people to deal with stress that they encounter every day, not matter how much of it they encounter.
