Even when it comes to a full recovery after a heart attack, women and men are still not equal. According to a study, women have it rougher than men usually because of one thing.
In a study conducted by researchers from Yale and is now published in Circulation recently, it's been revealed that stress is only prolonging the recovery process of more than 33,000 women who have gone through a heart attack.
The researchers obtained their much-needed sample from the data for VIRGO (Variation in Recovery: Role of Gender on Outcomes of Young AMI Patients), an observational study that looked into heart attack conditions among men and women between the ages of 18 to 55 years old living in Spain, Australia, and the United States.
For this recent study, the Yale research team chose around 2,300 females and a little more than half of males, all of whom went through a heart attack.
Researchers visited these patients during their admission for heart attack treatment and then asked patients on their perception to stress through a series of factors.
The research discovered that women are more stressed than men and that it's more pronounced on the younger females.
Moreover, as early as the first month after the heart attack, women struggled getting back their physical function and continued to feel chest pains.
They also experienced worse mental stress, which had a huge role in their delay of recovery. Two of the major sources of stress for them are family and money. In a recent Stress in America survey conducted by American Psychological Association, money is the number one stressor in the country.
When it comes to family stress, family conflict over the last 12 months and death in the family were two of the major triggers.
Although men were deemed less stressed, they also have a major stressor: business failure.
For the researchers, the study is significant since it will enable health care providers give the best form of support to these patients.
