This is something that I do personally worry about a fair bit, and is of course important, so I thought I would start a thread about it to share advice, comments, knowledge, etc etc
I find personally that with things like this, they are only really scary if you don't understand them, and for anyone else at all concerned about it like me hopefully that's what we can attempt to do!
I was actually researching into it all last night, and I learnt quite a lot of stuff. Apparently, anxiety can affect the heart and circulatory system but this tends to be over a prolonged period of time and mainly amongst vulnerable people, such as in an older age bracket or with other health concerns, or who smoke etc etc.
Anxiety can do things like speed up the heart rate with adrenaline, and increase blood pressure (both of which can be combated apparently with beta-blockers like Propranolol and probably other things) and also can cause slight narrowing of blood vessels mostly due to higher levels of the hormone Cortisol which is also produced in the Adrenal Gland, and also increase platelet numbers (both of these can be combated and lowered apparently with omega 3).
Sorry of course if this is worrying anyone, I don't mean to do that it's just I want to share what I've learnt in the hope that it will help other people! Also, please remember that unless you are in one of those higher risk groups I mentioned you're probably totally fine. It's just I was trying to determine "quick fixes" for this during stress/anxiety and these were my findings ^_^
So what do you think? I have been worried (particularly before I learnt more) so I'd love to have a chat about it and see if things can become clearer
Thanks all,
Hoppi!