Anxiety and Stress Forum - Endothelial Dysfunction -- Why Not to Worry

I figure rather than post this to many different threads, i'll just start a new one, since nikos galls has blown through here like a tornado and upset a lot of us. His fundamental theory is that anxiety is, in fact, something called "endothelial disfunction." I hope that everyone can see that he is posting misinformation; his posts are not credible, and should be ignored. Here's what I found out about endothelial dysfunction with just a little research on the web.

Endothelial dysfunction is a symptom, not necessarily a condition. It is also known as a coronary spasm or variant angina. A quick look at webmd and mayoclinic.Org indicates that this disfunction is a medical term referring to hardening or spasming of the arteries in and near the heart. These spasms can lead to angina -- chest pain caused by an interruption of the blood supply to the heart. Heart attack is possible if the dysfunction lasts for a long time. Extreme stress can lead to these spasms.

Now, don't worry yourself into a frenzy by going off to other websites to look up the symptoms I mentioned quite yet. Keep reading...

So, essentially, this tells us what we already know -- arteries near the heart cause heart problems when they don't function correctly, and that stress is hard on the heart. The good news, from what I read, is that the link between stress and this dysfunction may be able to lead to a better understanding of heart disease, and may help treat it in the future. So, rather than being afraid of it, we should be glad that someone's made a measurable medical link here!

Lots of sufferers of anxiety have chest pain. It is wise to go to your doctor if you have chest pain and are concerned about your heart. The task, then, is to believe the diagnosis if it comes back negative. Seek a second opinion if necessary, but then believe the diagnosis -- a hard thing to do for many anxiety sufferers at first! Then, treat the anxiety in whatever way you and your doctor determine is best for you -- therapy, meditation, cbt (cognitive-behavioral therapy), exercise, medication, biofeedback, sound-light therapy, etc.

So what positive things can we take away from this? We have learned that if we learn to reduce our stress, we may save our hearts in the future. All the more reason to band together to get well Smile

so let's put this whole nikos gallis episode behind us, shall we?