BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

I'm putting this one in the "Just Can't Win" file: The use of antidepressants in order to fight severe depression might lead to heart-related problems, and even to sudden cardiac death in women, according to Doctors from Columbia University in New York and the University of California in San Diego. The scientists said that the results do not necessarily mean that antidepressant drugs pose serious dangers to health. "We suspect that their use is a marker for people with worse depression," explained the main author of the study Dr. William Whang, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. He added that the increased risk can be attributed to antidepressant use, "but that use may well be a marker of more severe symptoms. " The scientist also explained that the link between depression and heart disease is considered to be more physical, rather than psychological, and said that female patients wit...

By Julie Steenhuysen Anger and other strong emotions can trigger potentially deadly heart rhythms in certain vulnerable people, U.S. researchers said on Monday. Previous studies have shown that earthquakes, war or even the loss of a World Cup Soccer match can increase rates of death from sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops circulating blood. CAN YOU BE SCARED TO DEATH? CLICK HERE "It's definitely been shown in all different ways that when you put a whole population under a stressor that sudden death will increase," said Dr. Rachel Lampert of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, whose study appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "Our study starts to look at how does this really affect the electrical system of the heart," Lampert said. She and colleagues studied 62 patients with heart disease and implantable heart defibrillators or ICDs that can detect dangerous heart rhythms or arrhythmias and deliver an electrical shock t...

"The blood froze in my veins" or "My blood curdled" - these common figures of speech can be taken literally, according to the latest studies. Indeed, more literally than some of us would like. For it turns out that intense fear and panic attacks can really make our blood clot and increase the risk of thrombosis or heart attack. Earlier studies showed that stress and anxiety can influence coagulation. However, they were based almost entirely on questionnaire surveys of healthy subjects. In contrast, the Bonn-based research team around Franziska Geiser (from the Clinic and Policlinic for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy) and Ursula Harbrecht (from the Institute of Experimental Haematology and Transfusion Medicine) have been the first to conduct a very careful examination of coagulation in patients with anxiety disorders. Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time - fear of failing the math test, dread of going down into the dark cellar or, in a more gener...