[Cardiovascular impact of psychological stress]

The cardiovascular impact of stress depends on, first individual perception of stress and second individual cardiovascular reactivity to a stressful stimulation. Psychological stressors are filtered by cognitive appraisal mechanisms before causing biological response so that, for the same strain, individual effects may differ. Therefore, due to complexity of stress personal management, a multilevel stress measurement strategy is needed. To measure stress cardiovascular impact, stress should be precisely quantified. Recently, questionnaires have been developed to score not only the strain but also the personal perception of the strain. Individual stress reactivity can be evaluated by hormone response (epinephrine, norepinephrine, steroids) or by cardiovascular reactivity to a stress test. Until now, all the studies found that stress was independently related to blood pressure especially in active people. Prospective studies are still ongoing to definitively prove that stress could explain hypertension in a subset of hypertensives.