#cardiovascularhealth — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cardiovascularhealth, aggregated by home.social.
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Women's Health Month Is Overrated - Try Mermaid Szn
A single menu swap can slash your sodium by a quarter and shave 1,000 calories from lunch. Discover how Mermaid Szn turns a daily bite into a heart‑healthy advantage, proving that real change beats a calendar.
https://cycleaware.help/womens-health-month-overrated-mermaid-szn/
#mermaidszn #wellnessmenu #womenshealthmonth #cardiovascularhealth #dayton
-
Women's Health Month Is Overrated - Try Mermaid Szn
A single menu swap can slash your sodium by a quarter and shave 1,000 calories from lunch. Discover how Mermaid Szn turns a daily bite into a heart‑healthy advantage, proving that real change beats a calendar.
https://cycleaware.help/womens-health-month-overrated-mermaid-szn/
#mermaidszn #wellnessmenu #womenshealthmonth #cardiovascularhealth #dayton
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DATE: May 18, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Private religious practices are linked to lower blood pressure spikes during stress
New research suggests that engaging in private religious activities, like praying or reading sacred texts, tends to lower sudden spikes in blood pressure during stressful situations. The findings indicate that personal religious habits might provide a protective buffer against the physical toll of acute stress, while general spiritual feelings do not appear to offer the same physical benefit. This study was recently published in the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior.
Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death worldwide. Psychological stress is a recognized risk factor for developing heart problems, rivaling physical factors like smoking, obesity, or a lack of exercise. When people experience sudden stress, their bodies react by increasing their heart rate and blood pressure. This biological change is known as cardiovascular reactivity.
Exaggerated or prolonged physical reactions to temporary stress can eventually damage the heart and blood vessels. Scientists suggest that finding ways to manage these bodily responses might help protect long-term heart health. Past studies have noted that religious and spiritual individuals often experience better physical health and lower rates of heart disease.
Despite this observed connection, past scientific work has frequently mixed up the concepts of religion and spirituality. Religion typically involves foundational principles, rituals, and practices centered around a higher power or specific tradition. Spirituality tends to be a broader concept, describing a personal search for meaning, inner peace, or a feeling of connection to the world at large.
Because modern society is seeing an increase in people who identify as spiritual but not religious, the authors wanted to separate these two ideas. They aimed to examine whether it is specific religious behaviors or general spiritual feelings that actually help the body cope with sudden stress.
“I have always been interested in psychosocial factors and how they influence health, particularly stress responses and the development of cardiovascular disease,” said Ailbhe Dempsey, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Limerick in Ireland. “Through my reading, I realized that religiosity and spirituality are often conflated and used interchangeably in the literature.”
“With the societal decline in traditional religion alongside the rise of more individualized forms of spirituality, I became interested in how these constructs may differently relate to health outcomes,” Dempsey explained. “I soon discovered that the literature in this area was both limited and mixed, particularly due to the poor distinction between religiosity and spirituality.”
“This sparked my interest in the topic and ultimately led me to explore it further in my PhD research,” Dempsey noted. Dempsey is affiliated with both the Study of Anxiety, Stress and Health Laboratory and the Health Research Institute at the university.
To explore these relationships, the researchers utilized data from a large national project known as the Midlife Development in the United States study. The final sample included exactly 628 middle-aged adults, ranging in age from 35 to 85 years old. The group was predominantly white and primarily identified with Christian traditions.
Participants visited a clinical research center for a standardized stress testing procedure. The researchers monitored three specific bodily functions throughout the experiment. They tracked systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in blood vessels when the heart beats. They also tracked diastolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in vessels when the heart rests between beats, along with overall heart rate.
The testing protocol lasted about an hour and a half and involved three distinct phases. First, participants sat quietly for eleven minutes so researchers could record their resting baseline measurements. After this resting period, participants completed two difficult mental tasks designed to induce acute psychological stress.
The first stressor was a mental arithmetic task requiring participants to solve complex math problems under time pressure. The second stressor was a cognitive test where participants had to quickly identify font colors that did not match the written word, like the word “red” printed in blue ink. After completing these two six-minute stressful tasks, participants sat through a six-minute recovery period.
To measure private religious practices, the researchers used a survey that asked participants how often they prayed in private, meditated or chanted, and read religious literature. Higher scores on this three-item questionnaire indicated more frequent private religious activity. A separate five-item survey measured daily spiritual experiences, asking participants how often they felt a deep sense of inner peace, a connection to all life, or a profound appreciation for the world.
This spiritual scale did not mention God or specific religions to keep it separate from formal theology. The stress tasks successfully provoked a physical reaction across the sample. On average, the participants reported feeling significantly more stressed during the mental challenges compared to their resting state.
When the researchers analyzed the data, they discovered a specific association between private religious practices and the body’s reaction to stress. Participants who reported higher levels of private religious practices experienced significantly lower spikes in their systolic blood pressure during the stressful tasks.
“The findings suggest that private religious practices, such as private prayer, may help some individuals respond to stress in a healthier way by reducing physiological stress responses, particularly blood pressure reactivity (results remained after controlling for baseline cardiovascular measures, age, sex, race, BMI, smoking, or prescription medication use),” Dempsey said. Body mass index, or BMI, is a standard measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Interestingly, the researchers did not find any associations between daily spiritual experiences and any of the cardiovascular measurements. General feelings of inner peace or a connection to nature did not appear to dampen the physical stress response.
“In contrast, spirituality alone did not appear to influence these physiological measures,” Dempsey added. “The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between religiosity and spirituality, as they may affect health and stress responses in different ways.”
The authors suggest that deeply internalized religious beliefs, practiced regularly in private, might provide a structured framework for coping with life’s challenges. Engaging in personal religious habits may help people reframe stressful events, making them feel less threatening. This mental shift could be the reason why the body does not react as severely, experiencing less strain on the cardiovascular system over time.
By fostering positive meaning in life, religious practices may lead to frequent experiences of emotions such as gratitude and joy. Psychological theories suggest that these positive emotional experiences can expand a person’s cognitive flexibility. This helps individuals develop enduring resources like resilience, which tends to buffer against the negative physical effects of daily stressors.
While the study provides nuanced insights, the researchers acknowledge a few limitations in their work. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the scientists cannot prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. It is possible that people with naturally calmer physical stress responses are simply more drawn to private religious practices, rather than the practices themselves causing the physiological calmness.
“An important caveat is that the findings were specific to systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity, as private religious practices were not associated with diastolic blood pressure or heart rate responses to stress,” Dempsey explained. The SBP abbreviation specifically refers to the top number in a blood pressure reading, which showed the only significant physiological change in the models.
The sample was also somewhat limited in its diversity. Most participants were white and from Christian backgrounds, where practices like personal prayer and reading scripture are highly common.
“In addition, the sample was predominantly Christian, which may have influenced the observed associations,” Dempsey cautioned. “As religiosity can vary across cultural and social contexts, these findings may not generalize to more religiously diverse or less religious populations. Future research should therefore explore these relationships across different cultural and religious groups.”
There is also a possibility for misinterpretation regarding the content of the surveys. The private religious practices scale included meditation, which is a practice utilized in secular and spiritual contexts as well as religious ones. Future studies should separate meditation from explicitly religious actions to better understand what specifically drives the dampening of the stress response.
Additionally, while lower cardiovascular reactivity is generally seen as healthy, an unusually blunted physical response to stress can sometimes indicate negative health outcomes, such as depression or behavioral disengagement. The scientists suggest that more research is needed to fully understand when a muted stress response is adaptive and when it might be harmful.
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to build on these findings to better understand the distinct physical impacts of faith. “With regard to this research area, I hope to conduct longitudinal studies exploring different facets of religiosity and spirituality, including both positive and negative dimensions, across diverse cultural groups and age ranges,” Dempsey said.
The study, “Examining the associations between private religious practices, daily spiritual experiences, and cardiovascular stress reactivity,” was authored by Ailbhe Dempsey, Siobhán Howard, and Stephen Gallagher. The research was supported by Taighde Éireann and the National Institute on Aging.
-------------------------------------------------
DAILY EMAIL DIGEST: Email [email protected] -- no subject or message needed.
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot
Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com
EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org
READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org
It's primitive... but it works... mostly...
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PrivateReligiousPractices #PrayerAndStress #CardiovascularHealth #BloodPressureReactivity #ReligiosityVsSpirituality #StressManagement #HealthPsychology #MentalCopingStrategies #FaithAndWellness #CardioResearch
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DATE: May 18, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Private religious practices are linked to lower blood pressure spikes during stress
New research suggests that engaging in private religious activities, like praying or reading sacred texts, tends to lower sudden spikes in blood pressure during stressful situations. The findings indicate that personal religious habits might provide a protective buffer against the physical toll of acute stress, while general spiritual feelings do not appear to offer the same physical benefit. This study was recently published in the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior.
Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death worldwide. Psychological stress is a recognized risk factor for developing heart problems, rivaling physical factors like smoking, obesity, or a lack of exercise. When people experience sudden stress, their bodies react by increasing their heart rate and blood pressure. This biological change is known as cardiovascular reactivity.
Exaggerated or prolonged physical reactions to temporary stress can eventually damage the heart and blood vessels. Scientists suggest that finding ways to manage these bodily responses might help protect long-term heart health. Past studies have noted that religious and spiritual individuals often experience better physical health and lower rates of heart disease.
Despite this observed connection, past scientific work has frequently mixed up the concepts of religion and spirituality. Religion typically involves foundational principles, rituals, and practices centered around a higher power or specific tradition. Spirituality tends to be a broader concept, describing a personal search for meaning, inner peace, or a feeling of connection to the world at large.
Because modern society is seeing an increase in people who identify as spiritual but not religious, the authors wanted to separate these two ideas. They aimed to examine whether it is specific religious behaviors or general spiritual feelings that actually help the body cope with sudden stress.
“I have always been interested in psychosocial factors and how they influence health, particularly stress responses and the development of cardiovascular disease,” said Ailbhe Dempsey, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Limerick in Ireland. “Through my reading, I realized that religiosity and spirituality are often conflated and used interchangeably in the literature.”
“With the societal decline in traditional religion alongside the rise of more individualized forms of spirituality, I became interested in how these constructs may differently relate to health outcomes,” Dempsey explained. “I soon discovered that the literature in this area was both limited and mixed, particularly due to the poor distinction between religiosity and spirituality.”
“This sparked my interest in the topic and ultimately led me to explore it further in my PhD research,” Dempsey noted. Dempsey is affiliated with both the Study of Anxiety, Stress and Health Laboratory and the Health Research Institute at the university.
To explore these relationships, the researchers utilized data from a large national project known as the Midlife Development in the United States study. The final sample included exactly 628 middle-aged adults, ranging in age from 35 to 85 years old. The group was predominantly white and primarily identified with Christian traditions.
Participants visited a clinical research center for a standardized stress testing procedure. The researchers monitored three specific bodily functions throughout the experiment. They tracked systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in blood vessels when the heart beats. They also tracked diastolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in vessels when the heart rests between beats, along with overall heart rate.
The testing protocol lasted about an hour and a half and involved three distinct phases. First, participants sat quietly for eleven minutes so researchers could record their resting baseline measurements. After this resting period, participants completed two difficult mental tasks designed to induce acute psychological stress.
The first stressor was a mental arithmetic task requiring participants to solve complex math problems under time pressure. The second stressor was a cognitive test where participants had to quickly identify font colors that did not match the written word, like the word “red” printed in blue ink. After completing these two six-minute stressful tasks, participants sat through a six-minute recovery period.
To measure private religious practices, the researchers used a survey that asked participants how often they prayed in private, meditated or chanted, and read religious literature. Higher scores on this three-item questionnaire indicated more frequent private religious activity. A separate five-item survey measured daily spiritual experiences, asking participants how often they felt a deep sense of inner peace, a connection to all life, or a profound appreciation for the world.
This spiritual scale did not mention God or specific religions to keep it separate from formal theology. The stress tasks successfully provoked a physical reaction across the sample. On average, the participants reported feeling significantly more stressed during the mental challenges compared to their resting state.
When the researchers analyzed the data, they discovered a specific association between private religious practices and the body’s reaction to stress. Participants who reported higher levels of private religious practices experienced significantly lower spikes in their systolic blood pressure during the stressful tasks.
“The findings suggest that private religious practices, such as private prayer, may help some individuals respond to stress in a healthier way by reducing physiological stress responses, particularly blood pressure reactivity (results remained after controlling for baseline cardiovascular measures, age, sex, race, BMI, smoking, or prescription medication use),” Dempsey said. Body mass index, or BMI, is a standard measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Interestingly, the researchers did not find any associations between daily spiritual experiences and any of the cardiovascular measurements. General feelings of inner peace or a connection to nature did not appear to dampen the physical stress response.
“In contrast, spirituality alone did not appear to influence these physiological measures,” Dempsey added. “The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between religiosity and spirituality, as they may affect health and stress responses in different ways.”
The authors suggest that deeply internalized religious beliefs, practiced regularly in private, might provide a structured framework for coping with life’s challenges. Engaging in personal religious habits may help people reframe stressful events, making them feel less threatening. This mental shift could be the reason why the body does not react as severely, experiencing less strain on the cardiovascular system over time.
By fostering positive meaning in life, religious practices may lead to frequent experiences of emotions such as gratitude and joy. Psychological theories suggest that these positive emotional experiences can expand a person’s cognitive flexibility. This helps individuals develop enduring resources like resilience, which tends to buffer against the negative physical effects of daily stressors.
While the study provides nuanced insights, the researchers acknowledge a few limitations in their work. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the scientists cannot prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. It is possible that people with naturally calmer physical stress responses are simply more drawn to private religious practices, rather than the practices themselves causing the physiological calmness.
“An important caveat is that the findings were specific to systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity, as private religious practices were not associated with diastolic blood pressure or heart rate responses to stress,” Dempsey explained. The SBP abbreviation specifically refers to the top number in a blood pressure reading, which showed the only significant physiological change in the models.
The sample was also somewhat limited in its diversity. Most participants were white and from Christian backgrounds, where practices like personal prayer and reading scripture are highly common.
“In addition, the sample was predominantly Christian, which may have influenced the observed associations,” Dempsey cautioned. “As religiosity can vary across cultural and social contexts, these findings may not generalize to more religiously diverse or less religious populations. Future research should therefore explore these relationships across different cultural and religious groups.”
There is also a possibility for misinterpretation regarding the content of the surveys. The private religious practices scale included meditation, which is a practice utilized in secular and spiritual contexts as well as religious ones. Future studies should separate meditation from explicitly religious actions to better understand what specifically drives the dampening of the stress response.
Additionally, while lower cardiovascular reactivity is generally seen as healthy, an unusually blunted physical response to stress can sometimes indicate negative health outcomes, such as depression or behavioral disengagement. The scientists suggest that more research is needed to fully understand when a muted stress response is adaptive and when it might be harmful.
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to build on these findings to better understand the distinct physical impacts of faith. “With regard to this research area, I hope to conduct longitudinal studies exploring different facets of religiosity and spirituality, including both positive and negative dimensions, across diverse cultural groups and age ranges,” Dempsey said.
The study, “Examining the associations between private religious practices, daily spiritual experiences, and cardiovascular stress reactivity,” was authored by Ailbhe Dempsey, Siobhán Howard, and Stephen Gallagher. The research was supported by Taighde Éireann and the National Institute on Aging.
-------------------------------------------------
DAILY EMAIL DIGEST: Email [email protected] -- no subject or message needed.
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot
Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com
EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org
READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org
It's primitive... but it works... mostly...
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PrivateReligiousPractices #PrayerAndStress #CardiovascularHealth #BloodPressureReactivity #ReligiosityVsSpirituality #StressManagement #HealthPsychology #MentalCopingStrategies #FaithAndWellness #CardioResearch
-
DATE: May 18, 2026 at 12:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Private religious practices are linked to lower blood pressure spikes during stress
New research suggests that engaging in private religious activities, like praying or reading sacred texts, tends to lower sudden spikes in blood pressure during stressful situations. The findings indicate that personal religious habits might provide a protective buffer against the physical toll of acute stress, while general spiritual feelings do not appear to offer the same physical benefit. This study was recently published in the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior.
Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death worldwide. Psychological stress is a recognized risk factor for developing heart problems, rivaling physical factors like smoking, obesity, or a lack of exercise. When people experience sudden stress, their bodies react by increasing their heart rate and blood pressure. This biological change is known as cardiovascular reactivity.
Exaggerated or prolonged physical reactions to temporary stress can eventually damage the heart and blood vessels. Scientists suggest that finding ways to manage these bodily responses might help protect long-term heart health. Past studies have noted that religious and spiritual individuals often experience better physical health and lower rates of heart disease.
Despite this observed connection, past scientific work has frequently mixed up the concepts of religion and spirituality. Religion typically involves foundational principles, rituals, and practices centered around a higher power or specific tradition. Spirituality tends to be a broader concept, describing a personal search for meaning, inner peace, or a feeling of connection to the world at large.
Because modern society is seeing an increase in people who identify as spiritual but not religious, the authors wanted to separate these two ideas. They aimed to examine whether it is specific religious behaviors or general spiritual feelings that actually help the body cope with sudden stress.
“I have always been interested in psychosocial factors and how they influence health, particularly stress responses and the development of cardiovascular disease,” said Ailbhe Dempsey, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Limerick in Ireland. “Through my reading, I realized that religiosity and spirituality are often conflated and used interchangeably in the literature.”
“With the societal decline in traditional religion alongside the rise of more individualized forms of spirituality, I became interested in how these constructs may differently relate to health outcomes,” Dempsey explained. “I soon discovered that the literature in this area was both limited and mixed, particularly due to the poor distinction between religiosity and spirituality.”
“This sparked my interest in the topic and ultimately led me to explore it further in my PhD research,” Dempsey noted. Dempsey is affiliated with both the Study of Anxiety, Stress and Health Laboratory and the Health Research Institute at the university.
To explore these relationships, the researchers utilized data from a large national project known as the Midlife Development in the United States study. The final sample included exactly 628 middle-aged adults, ranging in age from 35 to 85 years old. The group was predominantly white and primarily identified with Christian traditions.
Participants visited a clinical research center for a standardized stress testing procedure. The researchers monitored three specific bodily functions throughout the experiment. They tracked systolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in blood vessels when the heart beats. They also tracked diastolic blood pressure, which measures the pressure in vessels when the heart rests between beats, along with overall heart rate.
The testing protocol lasted about an hour and a half and involved three distinct phases. First, participants sat quietly for eleven minutes so researchers could record their resting baseline measurements. After this resting period, participants completed two difficult mental tasks designed to induce acute psychological stress.
The first stressor was a mental arithmetic task requiring participants to solve complex math problems under time pressure. The second stressor was a cognitive test where participants had to quickly identify font colors that did not match the written word, like the word “red” printed in blue ink. After completing these two six-minute stressful tasks, participants sat through a six-minute recovery period.
To measure private religious practices, the researchers used a survey that asked participants how often they prayed in private, meditated or chanted, and read religious literature. Higher scores on this three-item questionnaire indicated more frequent private religious activity. A separate five-item survey measured daily spiritual experiences, asking participants how often they felt a deep sense of inner peace, a connection to all life, or a profound appreciation for the world.
This spiritual scale did not mention God or specific religions to keep it separate from formal theology. The stress tasks successfully provoked a physical reaction across the sample. On average, the participants reported feeling significantly more stressed during the mental challenges compared to their resting state.
When the researchers analyzed the data, they discovered a specific association between private religious practices and the body’s reaction to stress. Participants who reported higher levels of private religious practices experienced significantly lower spikes in their systolic blood pressure during the stressful tasks.
“The findings suggest that private religious practices, such as private prayer, may help some individuals respond to stress in a healthier way by reducing physiological stress responses, particularly blood pressure reactivity (results remained after controlling for baseline cardiovascular measures, age, sex, race, BMI, smoking, or prescription medication use),” Dempsey said. Body mass index, or BMI, is a standard measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Interestingly, the researchers did not find any associations between daily spiritual experiences and any of the cardiovascular measurements. General feelings of inner peace or a connection to nature did not appear to dampen the physical stress response.
“In contrast, spirituality alone did not appear to influence these physiological measures,” Dempsey added. “The study highlights the importance of distinguishing between religiosity and spirituality, as they may affect health and stress responses in different ways.”
The authors suggest that deeply internalized religious beliefs, practiced regularly in private, might provide a structured framework for coping with life’s challenges. Engaging in personal religious habits may help people reframe stressful events, making them feel less threatening. This mental shift could be the reason why the body does not react as severely, experiencing less strain on the cardiovascular system over time.
By fostering positive meaning in life, religious practices may lead to frequent experiences of emotions such as gratitude and joy. Psychological theories suggest that these positive emotional experiences can expand a person’s cognitive flexibility. This helps individuals develop enduring resources like resilience, which tends to buffer against the negative physical effects of daily stressors.
While the study provides nuanced insights, the researchers acknowledge a few limitations in their work. Because the data was collected at a single point in time, the scientists cannot prove a direct cause-and-effect relationship. It is possible that people with naturally calmer physical stress responses are simply more drawn to private religious practices, rather than the practices themselves causing the physiological calmness.
“An important caveat is that the findings were specific to systolic blood pressure (SBP) reactivity, as private religious practices were not associated with diastolic blood pressure or heart rate responses to stress,” Dempsey explained. The SBP abbreviation specifically refers to the top number in a blood pressure reading, which showed the only significant physiological change in the models.
The sample was also somewhat limited in its diversity. Most participants were white and from Christian backgrounds, where practices like personal prayer and reading scripture are highly common.
“In addition, the sample was predominantly Christian, which may have influenced the observed associations,” Dempsey cautioned. “As religiosity can vary across cultural and social contexts, these findings may not generalize to more religiously diverse or less religious populations. Future research should therefore explore these relationships across different cultural and religious groups.”
There is also a possibility for misinterpretation regarding the content of the surveys. The private religious practices scale included meditation, which is a practice utilized in secular and spiritual contexts as well as religious ones. Future studies should separate meditation from explicitly religious actions to better understand what specifically drives the dampening of the stress response.
Additionally, while lower cardiovascular reactivity is generally seen as healthy, an unusually blunted physical response to stress can sometimes indicate negative health outcomes, such as depression or behavioral disengagement. The scientists suggest that more research is needed to fully understand when a muted stress response is adaptive and when it might be harmful.
Looking ahead, the researchers hope to build on these findings to better understand the distinct physical impacts of faith. “With regard to this research area, I hope to conduct longitudinal studies exploring different facets of religiosity and spirituality, including both positive and negative dimensions, across diverse cultural groups and age ranges,” Dempsey said.
The study, “Examining the associations between private religious practices, daily spiritual experiences, and cardiovascular stress reactivity,” was authored by Ailbhe Dempsey, Siobhán Howard, and Stephen Gallagher. The research was supported by Taighde Éireann and the National Institute on Aging.
-------------------------------------------------
DAILY EMAIL DIGEST: Email [email protected] -- no subject or message needed.
Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org
Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot
NYU Information for Practice puts out 400-500 good quality health-related research posts per week but its too much for many people, so that bot is limited to just subscribers. You can read it or subscribe at @PsychResearchBot
Since 1991 The National Psychologist has focused on keeping practicing psychologists current with news, information and items of interest. Check them out for more free articles, resources, and subscription information: https://www.nationalpsychologist.com
EMAIL DAILY DIGEST OF RSS FEEDS -- SUBSCRIBE: http://subscribe-article-digests.clinicians-exchange.org
READ ONLINE: http://read-the-rss-mega-archive.clinicians-exchange.org
It's primitive... but it works... mostly...
-------------------------------------------------
#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PrivateReligiousPractices #PrayerAndStress #CardiovascularHealth #BloodPressureReactivity #ReligiosityVsSpirituality #StressManagement #HealthPsychology #MentalCopingStrategies #FaithAndWellness #CardioResearch
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Cardio Diagnostics advances AI-powered cardiovascular disease detection using blood tests and biomarker analysis, enabling earlier diagnosis and personalized treatment. #CardiovascularHealth #MedicalInnovation
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Cardio Diagnostics advances AI-powered cardiovascular disease detection using blood tests and biomarker analysis, enabling earlier diagnosis and personalized treatment. #CardiovascularHealth #MedicalInnovation
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Cardio Diagnostics advances AI-powered cardiovascular disease detection using blood tests and biomarker analysis, enabling earlier diagnosis and personalized treatment. #CardiovascularHealth #MedicalInnovation
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New book 'What About Her Heart' by cardiologist Arash Bereliani addresses critical awareness gap in women's heart disease. Women experience atypical symptoms often missed in emergency care. Available now on Amazon. #CardiovascularHealth #WomensHealth
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New book 'What About Her Heart' by cardiologist Arash Bereliani addresses critical awareness gap in women's heart disease. Women experience atypical symptoms often missed in emergency care. Available now on Amazon. #CardiovascularHealth #WomensHealth
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New book 'What About Her Heart' by cardiologist Arash Bereliani addresses critical awareness gap in women's heart disease. Women experience atypical symptoms often missed in emergency care. Available now on Amazon. #CardiovascularHealth #WomensHealth
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New book 'What About Her Heart' by cardiologist Arash Bereliani addresses critical awareness gap in women's heart disease. Women experience atypical symptoms often missed in emergency care. Available now on Amazon. #CardiovascularHealth #WomensHealth
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🎬 Video Fact-Check
The 30-Year Statin Panic Is Finally Over
by Dr Brad StanfieldThe video explores how fears about statin medications developed and how ongoing research has reshaped the conversation around their role in heart health. We reviewed the claims and context presented by Dr Brad Stanfield.
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Experts Reveal How Many Miles to Walk Per Day for Better Health
This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn…
#NewsBeep #News #Fitness #000stepsaday #10 #AlbertMatheny #CA #Canada #cardiovascularhealth #DougSklar #Health #Matheny #PhysicalFitness #SoHoStrengthLab #stepcount
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/655629/ -
https://www.europesays.com/uk/945613/ Experts Reveal How Many Miles to Walk Per Day for Better Health #000StepsADay #10 #AlbertMatheny #CardiovascularHealth #DougSklar #Fitness #Health #Matheny #PhysicalFitness #SoHoStrengthLab #StepCount #UK #UnitedKingdom
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Experts Reveal How Many Miles to Walk Per Day for Better Health
This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn…
#NewsBeep #News #Fitness #000stepsaday #10 #AlbertMatheny #cardiovascularhealth #DougSklar #Health #Matheny #PhysicalFitness #SoHoStrengthLab #stepcount #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/571130/ -
https://www.europesays.com/ie/473036/ Experts Reveal How Many Miles to Walk Per Day for Better Health #000StepsADay? #10 #AlbertMatheny #CardiovascularHealth #DougSklar #Éire #Fitness #Health #IE #Ireland #Matheny #PhysicalFitness #SoHoStrengthLab #StepCount
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https://www.europesays.com/ie/472705/ Experts Reveal How Many Miles to Walk Per Day for Better Health #000StepsADay? #10 #AlbertMatheny #CardiovascularHealth #DougSklar #Éire #Fitness #Health #IE #Ireland #Matheny #PhysicalFitness #SoHoStrengthLab #StepCount
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🎬 Video Fact-Check
The 60-Year Cholesterol War Is Finally Over
by Dr Brad StanfieldThe video explores shifting perspectives on cholesterol's role in heart disease and how medical consensus has changed over time. We reviewed the historical claims and current context discussed by Dr Brad Stanfield.
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4 Healthy Aging Habits a Longevity Doctor Follows Most Days
Dr. Julie Chen, an integrative medicine physician, is a big fan of preventive habits. Loading audio narration… “If…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Health #cardiovascularhealth #chen #compoundexercise #Disease #Doctor #healthbenefit #intermittentfasting #longevitydoctor #mostday #people #Research #Sleep #strengthtraining #supplement #wholefood
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/593077/ -
4 Healthy Aging Habits a Longevity Doctor Follows Most Days
Dr. Julie Chen, an integrative medicine physician, is a big fan of preventive habits. Loading audio narration… “If…
#NewsBeep #News #US #USA #UnitedStates #UnitedStatesOfAmerica #Health #cardiovascularhealth #chen #compoundexercise #Disease #Doctor #healthbenefit #intermittentfasting #longevitydoctor #mostday #people #Research #Sleep #strengthtraining #supplement #wholefood
https://www.newsbeep.com/us/593077/ -
The role of aspirin in preventing cardiovascular disease #aspirin #cardiovascularhealth #heart ... Continue to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVYNA1X3KgM
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The role of aspirin in preventing cardiovascular disease #aspirin #cardiovascularhealth #heart ... Continue to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVYNA1X3KgM
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The role of aspirin in preventing cardiovascular disease #aspirin #cardiovascularhealth #heart ... Continue to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVYNA1X3KgM
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https://www.europesays.com/uk/890725/ Alia Bhatt and Kriti Sanon’s fitness trainer shares no-gym ‘10-minute workout for busy people’: Do it whenever, wherever #10MinuteWorkout #AliaBhattKritiSanonFitnessTrainerShares10MinuteWorkoutForBusyPeopleYouCanDoWheneverWhereverNoGym #CardiovascularHealth #Fitness #FitnessRoutine #Health #HighIntensityMovement #MicroWorkouts #UK #UnitedKingdom
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Alia Bhatt and Kriti Sanon’s fitness trainer shares no-gym ‘10-minute workout for busy people’: Do it whenever, wherever
For those who claim their calendar is too crowded for the gym, the trainer behind some of Bollywood’s…
#NewsBeep #News #Fitness #10-minuteworkout #AliaBhattKritiSanonfitnesstrainershares10minuteworkoutforbusypeopleyoucandowheneverwherevernogym #CA #Canada #cardiovascularhealth #fitnessroutine #Health #high-intensitymovement #micro-workouts
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https://www.europesays.com/ie/432857/ Alia Bhatt and Kriti Sanon’s fitness trainer shares no-gym ‘10-minute workout for busy people’: Do it whenever, wherever #10MinuteWorkout #AliaBhattKritiSanonFitnessTrainerShares10MinuteWorkoutForBusyPeopleYouCanDoWheneverWhereverNoGym #CardiovascularHealth #Éire #Fitness #FitnessRoutine #Health #HighIntensityMovement #IE #Ireland #MicroWorkouts
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https://www.europesays.com/ie/414051/ MAHA says red meat will make you healthy. The American Heart Association disagrees #AmericanHeartAssn #AmericanHeartAssociation #BeefTallow #CardiovascularHealth #DietaryGuideline #EG #Éire #Fat #food #Government #Health #IE #Ireland #january #Kennedy #Nutrition #RedMeat #RefinedSugar #TropicalOil
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https://www.europesays.com/ie/412237/ Taurine Deficiency Symptoms, Causes, and Health Risks Explained #AminoAcids #CardiovascularHealth #CellBiology #Éire #Health #IE #Ireland #medical #MetabolicHealth #Neuroscience #NutritionalScience #OxidativeStress #RetinalHealth #Taurine
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https://www.europesays.com/ch/37829/ UBS Suggests 2 Longevity Stocks to Buy as the $8T Aging Boom Accelerates #AbbottLaboratories #AgingPopulation #CardiovascularHealth #Healthcare #longevity #MarketOpportunity #MedicalDeviceCompanies #UBS
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What Time Should You Stop Eating Before Bed? Here’s What Science Says
Credit: macniak / Getty Images Key Points A new study suggests that timing your meals — specifically, avoiding…
#UnitedStates #US #USA #america #BloodPressure #cardiovascularhealth #eatinghabits #HeartRate #science #technology #unitedstatesofamerica
https://www.europesays.com/2833125/ -
What Time Should You Stop Eating Before Bed? Here’s What Science Says https://www.byteseu.com/1858706/ #BloodPressure #CardiovascularHealth #EatingHabits #HeartRate #Science
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Emerging research links the gut microbiome to heart health. Beneficial bacteria may protect the heart, while others increase cardiovascular risk through metabolites like TMAO. https://english.mathrubhumi.com/lifestyle/health/gut-heart-axis-microbiome-cardiovascular-health-ahuya7f6?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon #GutHeartAxis #GutMicrobiome #CardiovascularHealth #Health
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Why your gut microbiome and heart are closer than you think
#Health #GutMicrobiome #HeartHealth #HeartDisease #CardiovascularHealth #GutHeartAxis #MicrobiomeResearch #HealthScience #MedicalResearch #PreventiveHealth #NutritionScience #HealthyGut
https://the-14.com/why-your-gut-microbiome-and-heart-are-closer-than-you-think/ -
Why your gut microbiome and heart are closer than you think
#Health #GutMicrobiome #HeartHealth #HeartDisease #CardiovascularHealth #GutHeartAxis #MicrobiomeResearch #HealthScience #MedicalResearch #PreventiveHealth #NutritionScience #HealthyGut
https://the-14.com/why-your-gut-microbiome-and-heart-are-closer-than-you-think/ -
Why your gut microbiome and heart are closer than you think
#Health #GutMicrobiome #HeartHealth #HeartDisease #CardiovascularHealth #GutHeartAxis #MicrobiomeResearch #HealthScience #MedicalResearch #PreventiveHealth #NutritionScience #HealthyGut
https://the-14.com/why-your-gut-microbiome-and-heart-are-closer-than-you-think/ -
Why Gardening is Good for Your Mental Health https://www.allforgardening.com/1633366/why-gardening-is-good-for-your-mental-health-2/ #CardiovascularHealth #DiggingInTheDirt #garden #gardener #gardening #ImageCredit #Shutterstock
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Italian-American Researchers Present Mediterranean Diet, Health, and Longevity at Annual Medical Conference https://www.diningandcooking.com/2267988/italian-american-researchers-present-mediterranean-diet-health-and-longevity-at-annual-medical-conference/ #AlternativeMedicine #biotech #cancer #CardiovascularHealth #CellBiology #ComplementaryMedicine #Diabetes #DigestiveDisorders #FoodScience #HealthFood #Healthcare #healthspan #HeartDisease #HiddenPennsylvania #HiddenPhillyMetro #Italia #Italian #ItalianDiet #italiano #italy #Newswise #nutrition #obesity #PersonalizedMedicine #Pharmaceuticals #PublicHealth #women
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Technology licensing is a big thing for us at #VTTFinland and leap towards a larger scale manufacturing. Today #CanaryMedical has made an licensing agreement with VTT on our proprietary MEMS sensor technology for use in their implantable cardiovascular products
#MEMS #PMUT #PressureSensor #CardiovascularHealth #TechnologyLicensing #LicensingAgreement
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https://www.europesays.com/uk/299920/ Safe to the Core: Genetic Study Clears Mo-Based Implants for Vascular Use #AllJournalNews #CardiovascularHealth #ChineseAcademyOfSciences #EthicsAndResearchMethods #Genetics #Molybdenum;MendelianRandomization;CardiovascularDisorders;CerebrovascularDisorders #Neuro #Newswise #Science #UK #UnitedKingdom
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Safe to the Core: Genetic Study Clears Mo-Based Implants for Vascular Use
Newswise — Molybdenum’s unique combination of strength, corrosion resistance, and radiopacity makes it an attractive material for stents,…
#NewsBeep #News #Genetics #AllJournalNews #CA #Canada #cardiovascularhealth #ChineseAcademyofSciences #EthicsandResearchMethods #Molybdenum;Mendelianrandomization;CardiovascularDisorders;CerebrovascularDisorders #Neuro #Newswise #Science
https://www.newsbeep.com/ca/30507/ -
Safe to the Core: Genetic Study Clears Mo-Based Implants for Vascular Use
Newswise — Molybdenum’s unique combination of strength, corrosion resistance, and radiopacity makes it an attractive material for stents,…
#NewsBeep #News #Genetics #AllJournalNews #cardiovascularhealth #ChineseAcademyofSciences #EthicsandResearchMethods #Molybdenum;Mendelianrandomization;CardiovascularDisorders;CerebrovascularDisorders #Neuro #Newswise #Science #UK #UnitedKingdom
https://www.newsbeep.com/uk/29754/ -
Monty Don ‘always’ plants these seeds ‘first’ in January https://www.allforgardening.com/1570358/monty-don-always-plants-these-seeds-first-in-january/ #CardiacHealth #CardiovascularHealth #ChilliSeeds #garden #gardening #GardeningIreland #GardeningTips #MontyDon
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(I'm copying this from LinkedIn, from Sean Mullen, an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois. I'll link to Sean if it turns out he's also in the Fediverse. I've asked him.)
Two years later—and the cardiovascular damage from Long COVID is still measurable.
A new study tracked people with Long COVID two years after their initial infection. These weren’t isolated anecdotes. Researchers used gold-standard physiological tools—microneurography, echocardiography, vascular imaging, and cardiopulmonary exercise testing—to quantify what many patients have been describing all along.
The findings are not subtle:
1. Sympathetic Nervous System Overdrive
Participants with Long COVID had 77% more sympathetic nerve bursts than matched controls. That’s not “just anxiety”—that’s measurable autonomic dysregulation.2. Vascular Dysfunction
Their arteries showed 26% lower flow-mediated dilation, a well-established marker of endothelial dysfunction and cardiovascular risk.3. Subclinical Heart Damage
Strain imaging revealed subtle impairments in cardiac function—often missed by routine exams but consistent with early-stage heart failure patterns.4. Impaired Exercise Capacity
On a maximal effort test, Long COVID patients reached *21% lower oxygen uptake*, despite comparable effort. It wasn’t deconditioning. It was systemic impairment.5. Cellular Markers of Injury and Stress
Blood tests revealed increased oxidative stress, lower antioxidant activity, and higher levels of extracellular vesicles from damaged endothelial cells.Yes, the study had limitations:
* Small sample (18 Long COVID, 19 controls)
* Cross-sectional design (not causal)
* Focused only on those with severe acute COVID
* Did not include pulmonary function or key inflammatory mediatorsBut even with these limitations, the findings are consistent with a growing body of evidence:
Long COVID is not just about fatigue—it’s a multi-system condition with real, measurable physiological consequences.Why does this matter?
Because the world continues to downplay or ignore this. And yet, the biological signals are loud. We cannot “walk this off.” We need research. We need scalable interventions.
One promising candidate?
IMST (Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training)
Just 5 minutes a day of breathing against resistance has shown promising results in reducing sympathetic overdrive and improving vascular health. It’s currently being tested in randomized trials for Long COVID.---
If you’re a clinician, researcher, or policy leader: This is your call to engage.
Let’s stop debating whether Long COVID is “real,” and start directing our attention—and funding—toward understanding and treating it.I’m happy to connect with others working in this space. Thanks to Nathaniel Jenkins, PhD, FAHA for pointing out this important paper.
#LongCovid #CardiovascularHealth #PublicHealth #COVID19 #ExerciseScience #HealthTech #VascularHealth
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpregu.00055.2025
