Deans' stroke musings: Brain activity may be predictor of stress-related cardiovascular risk

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, September 18, 2017

Brain activity may be predictor of stress-related cardiovascular risk

So your doctor can now measure the effects of the doctor caused stress you are under because your doctor has no fucking clue how to get you 100% recovered.
http://newsroom.heart.org/news/brain-activity-may-be-predictor-of-stress-related-cardiovascular-risk

American Heart Association Rapid Access Journal Report

August 23, 2017 Categories: Heart News

Study Highlights

A pattern of brain activity that occurs during psychological stress may predict bodily reactions, such as surges in our blood pressure, that increase risk for cardiovascular disease.
People who have exaggerated responses to stressors, like large rises in blood pressure or heart rate, are at greater risk of developing hypertension and premature death from cardiovascular disease, researchers say.

Embargoed until 3 p.m. CT / 4 p.m. ET Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2017
DALLAS, Aug. 23, 2017 — The brain may have a distinctive activity pattern during stressful events that predicts bodily reactions, such as rises in blood pressure that increase risk for cardiovascular disease, according to new proof-of-concept research in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
The new research, the largest brain-imaging study of cardiovascular stress physiology to date, introduced a brain-based explanation of why stress might influence a person’s heart health.
“Psychological stress can influence physical health and risk for heart disease, and there may be biological and brain-based explanations for this influence,” said Peter Gianaros, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and psychology professor at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.
To help understand the brain-body link between stress and health, researchers conducted mental stress tests and monitored blood pressure and heart rates during an MRI procedure. The mental tests were designed to create a stressful experience by having research volunteers receive negative feedback while they were making time-pressured responses to computer challenges.
Research participants – 157 men and 153 women – were 30 to 51 years old and part of the Pittsburgh Imaging Project, an ongoing study of how the brain influences cardiovascular disease risk. As expected, the mental stress tests increased blood pressure and heart rate in most of the volunteers compared to a non-stress baseline period.
Using machine-learning, researchers determined that a specific brain activity pattern reliably predicted the size of the volunteers’ blood pressure and heart rate reactions to the mental stress tests.
The brain areas that were especially predictive of stress-related cardiovascular reactions included those that determine whether information from the environment is threatening and that control the heart and blood vessels through the autonomic nervous system.
The study was based on a group of middle-aged healthy adults at low levels of risk for heart disease, so the findings may not be applicable to patients with existing heart disease. Also, brain imaging does not allow researchers to draw conclusions about causality.
“This kind of work is proof-of-concept, but it does suggest that, in the future, brain imaging might be a useful tool to identify people who are at risk for heart disease or who might be more or less suited for different kinds of interventions, specifically those that might be aimed at reducing levels of stress,” Gianaros said. “It’s the people who show the largest stress-related cardiovascular responses who are at the greatest risk for poor cardiovascular health and understanding the brain mechanisms for this may help to reduce their risk.”
Co-authors are Lei Sheu, Ph.D.; Fatma Uyar, Ph.D.; Jayanth Koushik, B.S.; J. Richard Jennings, Ph.D.; Tor Wager, Ph.D.; Aarti Singh, Ph.D.; and Timothy Verstynen, Ph.D. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation funded the study.
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