“It could have caused high and lasting levels of stress hormones” according to the researchers.
Over time, our blood vessels are aging and our heart can be weakened by exposure to tobacco, high blood pressure, excess cholesterol, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, sleep disorders and history of cardiac problems. More insidious because we are not always aware of it, stress and anxiety also represent very significant cardiac risk factors, promoting the risk of stroke.
Researchers from the universities of Toronto, Tyndale and Texas in Arlington have looked at the link between stress experienced during childhood and the risk of stroke during life. They analyzed 13,000 adults aged 65 and over (57% of women) who have, for some, experienced stressful episodes during their childhood such as negligence, cases of mental illnesses within the home, psychological violence or their parents’ divorce before 18 years old. None has undergone physical or sexual abuse.
Among all the participants, 7% had a stroke during their lifetime. After taking into account the risk factors commonly associated with strokes, the authors showed that the people who had the most risk of making a stroke (+61% compared to the others) were those whose parents had divorced. This risk was a very high very high in men than in women. Parental divorce would be as devastating for the cardiovascular system as depression and diabetes, two other well -known cardiovascular risk factors, report the authors in Plos One. Other forms of infantile stress (negligence, mental illness within the household …) were not associated with an over-risk of stroke.
The reasons for the link between the parents’ divorce and the occurrence of the stroke remain unclear. Scientists put forward the hypothesis that biological and social factors could come into play. “From a organic point of view, the fact that parents separated during childhood was able to cause high and lasting levels of stress hormones like cortisol (hormones that are responsible for an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, editor’s note). Living this during childhood has been able to have lasting effects on the brain in development and the ability of the child to react to stress “, commented Esme Fuller-Thomson, one of the authors. This discovery would be a track to improve stroke prevention, especially in people who have experienced a parental divorce. However, other research is necessary to establish causal links.