Stress and especially chronic stress can lead to microvascular disease and even make microvascular disease worse, by causing inflammation, overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system and endothelial dysfunction, which affects your heart's smallest vessels and increases your cardiovascular risk, especially if you're a woman.
Stress also triggers harmful physiological changes, like impaired blood flow vasoconstriction, which leads to symptoms like fatigue, angina and shortness of breath, even without having blockages in your larger arteries.
Having microvascular disease feels like regular heart disease in most cases, but often with longer lasting chest pain "angina" which can be a squeezing, pressure or tightness, along with shortness of breath pain in the arms, back, neck, and jaw and extreme fatigue.
These feelings with microvascular disease can be triggered by stress and sometimes even occur at rest, especially in women and is also described as feeling heavy like having a toddler on your chest and can be accompanied by nausea, dizziness, sleep problems and sweating even with clear arteries.
The way you get microvascular disease is from damage from conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and even from smoking, metabolic issues, vascular strain, lifestyle factors, hormonal changes and inflammation from conditions like lupus or systemic inflammation.
Diabetes and high blood sugar and high cholesterol can damage your blood vessel linings which results in endothelium and in turn leads to microvascular disease.
Chronic high blood pressure also weakens and stiffens blood vessel walls, leading to vascular strain and smoking accelerates damage to blood vessels and obesity, poor diet and inactivity can worsen your cardiovascular health.
And lower estrogen levels, which is common after menopause also increase risk of microvascular disease in women.
With endothelial dysfunction, the inner lining of your blood vessels become damaged and with impaired dilation, tiny vessels cannot open properly to supply oxygen during stress or exercise and with spasms and stiffness, the blood vessels become stiff or go into spasms, obstructing blood flow.
Microvascular disease is a condition that results in damage or dysfunction of the body's smallest blood vessels (capillaries, arterioles, venules), which also often leads to reduced blood flow and oxygen to vital organs like the heart, brain, and kidneys, causing symptoms such as chest pain (in the heart), cognitive issues (in the brain), or kidney problems, and is also linked to risk factors like diabetes, hypertension, smoking, and aging, with women being disproportionately affected, particularly in the heart.
Microvascular disease affects the brain's tiny blood vessels, which reduce blood flow and damages brain tissue, often silently until major symptoms appear.
Microvascular disease is a major contributor to lacunar strokes which are small, deep brain infarcts and increases the likelihood of overall stroke and it's the primary cause of cognitive impairment and vascular dementia, which affects memory and thinking and microvascular disease also damages motor pathways, which lead to walking difficulties, balance problems and parkinsonism and it can also cause depression, apathy and personality changes.
The symptoms of chronic microvascular disease in the brain are cognitive changes such as memory problems, mobility problems like falling or difficulty walking, mood shifts such as irritability or depression and stroke like symptoms such as slurred speech, vision problems, weakness and numbness.
The symptoms of chronic microvascular disease in the brain can vary depending on the location and the severity of the damage to the small blood vessels in the brain.
Problems with thinking, walking and mood are common symptoms of chronic microvascular disease in the brain.
The kind of doctor that treats small vessel disease is a vascular surgeon, vascular specialist, cardiologist and even a neurologist.
A neurologist is a doctor that specializes in disorders of the nervous system, including small vessel disease in the brain.
A vascular surgeon is a surgeon that can perform surgery to treat small vessel disease, like stenting or angioplasty.
A cardiologist is a doctor that specializes in heart and blood vessel conditions, including microvascular disease, "small vessel disease in the heart".
And a vascular specialist is a doctor that specializes in disorders of the blood vessels, including small vessels.
Small vessel disease is also known as microvascular disease as well as microangiopathy.
And depending on the organ affected by microvascular disease, it can also be called coronary microvascular disease or even microvascular dysfunction or cerebral small vessel disease.
Small vessel disease is what highlights the problem is affecting the smaller arteries, unlike traditional heart disease that also affects larger vessels.
Microangiopathy is a general medical term for a disease of small blood and coronary microvascular disease specifies that the small vessels in your heart are affected.
Cerebral small vessel disease is used when your small vessels in your brain are affected and microvascular dysfunction is what refers to the poor function of the small vessels.
Microvascular disease is progressive and chronic which can get worse over time, especially if any of the underlying conditions and risk factors are not managed or treated.
Microvascular disease affects your body's small blood vessels and potentially can result in tissue damage and even organ failure, which can also manifest as conditions such as increased stroke risk, heart failure and cognitive decline.
Early changes with microvascular disease can sometimes be reversible, but as microvascular disease progresses it can result in structural changes and health issues that can be irreversible and sometimes microvascular disease can progress silently.
Exercise can help microvascular disease as exercise helps to improve microvascular function by promoting blood flow and delivering the needed oxygen and nutrients as well as removing waste products and regulating inflammation as well as oxidative stress.
Physical activity and regular exercise helps counteract microvascular remodeling and also counteract the development of small vessel disease, which improves the structure and function of the tiny blood vessels.
Exercise can also initially cause the symptoms like chest pain in some people, but exercise is still crucial in managing microvascular disease and preventing further damage from microvascular disease.
Microvascular disease can feel like a heavy, tight or squeezing chest pain called angina, which can last a long time even when resting.
Microvascular disease can also cause shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness and unexplained fatigue.