Speaking of cardiovascular diseases, people think of organic diseases related to the heart and blood vessels, and rarely think of mental disorders. So, what types of mental and psychological disorders are common in cardiovascular disease?
Types of mental disorders
There are two most common types, one is anxiety and the other is depression. Anxiety is, first, generalized anxiety, followed by panic attacks, which are acute anxiety attacks. In addition, there are severe insomnia, somatization disorder, delirium, traumatic stress disorder, adjustment disorder and so on.
Types of patients with double heart disease
These patients with structural heart disease are prone to anxiety and depression because of their misunderstanding of heart disease treatment and prognosis; One category of patients reported chest tightness, chest pain, and symptoms of heart disease, and there was no organic disease after repeated examinations; Drug treatment for the above-mentioned diseases is not effective, and there are many such patients.
There is also a situation where patients suffer from heart disease due to mental and psychological problems. Common diseases include sympathetic electrical storm, stress-induced heart disease, stress-induced hypertension, and stress-induced coronary spasm. The above-mentioned situation is related to the disorder of human autonomic nervous system.
Autonomic nerves include sympathetic nerves and parasympathetic nerves. The sympathetic nerves of the human body mainly play an excitatory role. When an emergency state occurs or is in a state of excitement, the excitability of human sympathetic nerves increases, causing the human body to escape or improve. The state of emergency ability is a kind of self-protection of the human body, but if it is in a state of stress for a long time, it will be a chronic injury to the human body, resulting in endocrine immune dysfunction.
Among them, “sympathetic electrical storm” is commonly known as the overexcitation of sympathetic nerves that leads to the occurrence of ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation, and the repeated attacks are not easy to terminate. These patients have the above symptoms, and the general treatment effect is not good, and the sedative drugs will be relieved quickly.
Physiological basis of double heart disease
The brain has an area called the limbic system, and its important components include hippocampal structure, parahippocampal gyrus, etc. The limbic system is involved in mediating instinct and emotional behavior . Next to the limbic system is the hypothalamus, and the hypothalamus is the advanced center that manages the internal organs, especially our cardiovascular, bronchial, and gastrointestinal.
Therefore, when people are excited, their heart rate will increase and blood pressure will increase, because the hypothalamus and the limbic system are very close. After the limbic system transmitters are secreted, it will directly affect the hypothalamus. The secretion of the transmitter, the transmitter of the hypothalamus will affect the human cardiovascular system, which is why emotions can affect the cardiovascular system.
In addition, our human body also has a system called the autonomic nervous system. As the name suggests, it is not changed by the will of our body. It manages our internal organs, such as peristalsis and glandular secretion. When autonomic dysfunction occurs, why is it often manifested? The sympathetic nervous system is hyperactive and the vagus nerve function is decreased.
Sympathetic nerves are sent directly from twelve pairs of spinal nerves that govern our internal organs. However, our vagus nerve, a nerve directly sent out from the brainstem area of the brain, manages our main visceral systems, including the heart, lungs, digestion, urinary system, etc. This is why when the autonomic nervous system is dysfunctional, we will have a series of Symptoms are not discomfort in one organ, but discomfort in multiple organs. (Ding Rongjing, Deputy Chief Physician, Department of Cardiology, Peking University People’s Hospital)