The unique toll of stress and depression on women’s hearts

(McKenzie Beard/ The Washington Post) — Dianne Travis-Teague remembers clutching her chest as she navigated the chaos of a crowded hospital parking lot, searching for a space amid the throng of vehicles. For weeks a clinic in her hometown of Santa Barbara had been telling her the chest pain was merely the result of anxiety or indigestion.

At the emergency room, doctors quickly discovered that the two-time breast cancer survivor was having a heart attack. Surgery to unblock her arteries saved her life, but for the next four months, her pain continued. “I was feeling worse off after the stent than before,” she said. “I suffered, sometimes silently. My family suffered as well.”

It wasn’t until she visited a women’s heart specialist that she found answers. Her doctor asked questions about her life, family and stress related to her work as the director of alumni relations at a graduate school. Her physician, C. Noel Bairey Merz, director of ​​ the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center in the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, also explained the link between mental and cardiac health, especially in women. (…)