Being nervous around women can cause heart attacks!

If you think being nervous around women is not a big deal, wait until you hear about a new study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.  This article states:

Competing in vain for the attention of someone special or fretting over a mid-term exam may not be healthy.

These inflammatory triggers have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer and depression. The new results add to a growing body of research that links social stress with biological risks.

Risks include heart attacks in men as young as 24. Study coauthor Shelley Taylor, a social neuroscientist at the UCLA School of Medicine, said, "We wanted to see how mental states such as optimism, or social relationships such as competition, get under the skin," and her findings were shocking.

The Research:

The researchers asked 122 young, healthy adults to keep a diary of all positive and negative social interactions for eight days, as well as descriptions of any incidents that involved competition. “We picked young adults with no history of heart disease or inflammation disorders or depression [because] we wanted to look at the biological processes in a population that was healthy,” Taylor says.

Several days later, the scientists swabbed the volunteers’ inner cheeks for cell samples. Analyses revealed that the people with the most negative social interactions recorded in their diaries, and those who reported stressful competition in work or academic pursuits, had substantially higher levels of one of the inflammatory proteins (TNF receptor 2) than those who recorded fewer such incidents. People reporting stressful competition for another’s attention had high concentrations of another inflammatory protein (interleukin-6).

The volunteers then underwent a stressful 25-minute test in which they did arithmetic calculations in their heads and gave a brief speech in front of strangers. After this test, people who had had the most negative interactions earlier in the week again showed high levels of the inflammatory proteins.

The Results: 

In simple terms, the researches found that social stress can kill you! Not only can it drain you emotionally, it can drain you physically, until you no longer have the energy to keep going. This means that meeting women won't only stress you out, it may make you unable to perform when you two get alone (due to inflammation blocking blood flow to your genitals).

The Solution:

De-stress when you're in social situations! Try this quick relaxation technique, which can be done in the bathroom, a car, anywhere you can get away to find a nice, quiet place to sit.

1. Sit in a chair, and put your hands on your lap.
2. Take deep breaths in and out. Try a 4-count in, 4-count out.
3. When you start to feel calm, close your eyes. Then picture yourself on a tranquil beach. Picture the waves lapping at your feet, and imagine the sand underneath your toes. Then, get back up and go back to your social situation.
4. Whenever your stress come back, think back to your beach, and take one 4-second in breath, followed by one 4-second out breath.  Your relaxation will come back.

This works because your body remembers emotional states and burns them deeper into your neural pathways.  The more you do this exercise, the deeper your relaxation will be, and the more stress you'll be able to withstand while still staying relaxed. Like anything else in life, to master this technique, you need practice.

For more tips on how to handle your emotional stress, check out The Attraction Code.

Category: Blog