The cost of coping: a cardio-neuro-metabolic risk for black South Africans?

Abstract

Psychosocial stress is a contributing factor to cardiovascular disease. An important way of investigating the mechanisms underlying this association is acute psycho-physiological stress testing, involving measurement of physiological responses to laboratory-induced stress. Psycho-physiological stress testing allows individual differences in responses to standardised stress to be evaluated and related to psychosocial and cardiovascular risk factors. Accumulating evidence has demonstrated associations of disturbed psycho-physiological responses with sub-clinical measures of atherosclerosis, hypertension and metabolic risk