Stress Correlation to Heart Disease
In my research paper, I will be studying the correlation between stress and heart disease. The heart is the soul of our bodies, it’s located in the circulatory system and pumps blood around our body as our heart beats. The heart doesn’t only give us life physically; it is the essence of our emotions.
Our hearts are innervated. A few nerves supply slowness and others control the “fight or flight” response which is a release of hormones. This connects with the brain, when the brain is sent a signal it flies through the rest of the body within milliseconds. Stress is one of the most heavy emotions and is a silent killer. In fight or flight scenarios, our heart releases a hormone called adrenaline causing our heart to race and blood pressure to rise. Hyperarousal people experience fight or flight mode more often than the average person. Therefore, this group of people can develop high blood pressure. High blood pressure can damage your arteries by making them less elastic, which decreases the flow of blood and oxygen to your heart and leads to heart disease. In addition, the decreased blood flow to the heart can cause chronic heart disease.
Sources:
Background: This article supplies me with information about how the heart designins the body.
How I will use this information: How the heart works is beneficial to all the other systems in our body to keep us alive and breathing yet it connects to our psyche.
2:
Background: This article examines the hormone that is released when stress is occurring and supplies readers information on how to regulate your stress to benefit your daily life.
How I will use this information: When this hormone is released it increases heart rate and blood pressure leading to heart disease.
3. https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/about.htm
Background: This article supplies in depth information about blood pressure and the long term outcomes correlating with the heart.
How I will use this information: Why high blood pressure is bad for our systems.
Background: This article explains why the “fight or flight response” is a clinical condition.
How I will use this information: Hyperarousal people who are stuck in fight or flight response will have a higher probability of having heart disease.
Background: This article examines healthy habits individuals can pick up to help keep their stress low.
How I will use this information: The fixing of stress to lower the probability of heart disease.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
I’m confused about some claims in your Summary, StoneHarbor.
—What does it mean to “supply slowness”?
—Are you saying fight-or-flight IS a release of hormones?
—Or do you mean that, faced with a fight-or-flight situation (an imminent danger, for example) the body releases hormones? Those hormones might affect the heart. AND the brain. AND the whole nervous system. But it’s odd to connect the situation so intimately with the heart.
—What connects with the brain?
—The hormones? Where are they released? In the brain? How do they get there in milliseconds? NERVE responses could travel that fast. Is that what you mean?
—You appear to want to connect Stress and Fight-or-Flight.
—Could your second sentence here be revised to say “In periods of high stress, our heart releases a hormone . . . “? Would that be the same thing?
—Are you sure the HEART releases a hormone?
—The heart releases a hormone that makes the heart race?
—Are you distinguishing between people who are by nature more vulnerable to stress? Worriers? People who live in irrational fear? Or pro athletes, racecar drivers, beat cops, surgeons, whose jobs place them in “stressful” situations that wouldn’t be described as Fight-or-Flight at all.
—You repeat yourself here, StoneHarbor.
—You say High blood pressure “decreases the flow of blood and oxygen to your heart and leads to heart disease” and also that “decreased blood flow to the heart can cause chronic heart disease.”
Your sources are preliminary and basic, StoneHarbor. Your topic, too, is pretty straightforward and not likely to turn up anything very surprising. Is there an angle to work here?
For example, as I hinted above, do people in what everybody would acknowledge are “stressful” jobs naturally develop Occupational Heart Disease? (You could call it that if it exists.)
It would be wonderful, surprising, and fascinating to find out that there’s very little correlation between occupation and heart disease. Maybe people in “stressful” jobs cope better with dangerous or threatening or demanding situations. Maybe there’s a higher likelihood that insurance claims adjusters who have to face angry sick people on the phone all day are more likely to get heart disease than road construction workers handling heavy equipment.
Read as much as you can and try to stay open to surprise.
I just did a two-second Google Scholar search and found 100 sources for “occupational heart disease.”
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C31&q=%22occupational+heart+disease%22&btnG=
You probably won’t get a grade for this Proposal piece until there are more sources in it and it becomes your Annotated Bibliography, one of your Portfolio pieces.