Medicine: Stress & Cholesterol

The effect of mental stress on the human heart is still a puzzle to doctors. So is the role of cholesterol in clogging the coronary arteries. Last week medical researchers learned that they may not be able to solve one puzzle without also solving the other. Emotions, reported Dr.

Stewart Wolf and colleagues at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, have a measurable effect on the cholesterol level in the blood.

For months, the Oklahoma researchers kept their subjects in a hospital and carefully restricted them to a controlled diet.

The doctors wanted to be sure that when cholesterol levels varied, varying foods were not the reason. Exercise and all other activities were also controlled and tabulated. And cholesterol levels were regularly checked.

One elderly man's cholesterol hit its peak for his entire hospital stay when another patient called him a dirty name and threatened to start a fight. Another's hit a similar peak in a row over a card game.

A third man's varied in proportion to a woman friend's solicitude for him. In a woman patient, the reading was consistently high until her doctor was changed—she just could not stand the first one.

To clinch their case, the researchers report in the medical journal Circulation, they took readings on two patients both during friendly talks and during interviews in which psychiatrists probed for deep-seated elements of emotional upset.

In both patients, cholesterol levels stayed even or went down during pleasant interviews. But the cholesterol shot up within an hour of stressful sessions.