Postdoctoral research associate Fangqi Guo published an 18-year prospective study Jan. 17 that reveals how childhood and adolescent stress can lead to a higher risk of cardiometabolic problems, including high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes in adults.

The study collected data from 276 participants from the Southern California Children’s Health Study and consisted of follow-up assessments from 2018 to 2021, starting with the parents’ reports of their children’s stress when the children were around 6 years old, the participant’s self-reported stress at around 24 years old.

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The children and their parents reported their stress levels based on the Perceived Stress Scale, which included questions like, “In the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?” Based on these assessments, the participants were sorted into four stress patterns: consistently high, increasing, decreasing and consistently low. The researchers then looked at cardiometabolic risks in these participants, and concluded, “Consistently high perceived stress from adolescence to adulthood may contribute to greater cardiometabolic risk in young adulthood.”

An article published by the American Heart Association explained how Guo and her colleagues assessed cardiometabolic health by measuring blood pressure, carotid artery intima-media thickness, body weight, body fat percentage and distribution, and hemoglobin A1C. By measuring these, the researchers assessed the participants’ cardiometabolic health and connected it back to the perceived stress to find that higher stress levels were linked with cardiometabolic risks. 

“We examined [the participants’] cardiometabolic health, so things like blood pressure, lipids, glucose, all of those factors that can contribute to cardiovascular risk in later life,” said Shohreh Farzan, one of the study’s authors. “What we found was that individuals who reported having consistently high levels of stress from adolescence all the way into adulthood seem to have the highest risk of some of these cardiovascular risk factors.” 

“What this paper is showing is that it’s how we are perceiving the stress, how we manage it, how we internalize those stressful cues that seem to be impacting some of these health outcomes,” Farzan said. “Definitely figuring out how to manage stress is going to be an important way that we can prevent later cardiovascular risk.” 

USC has many different clubs focused on mental health and helping individuals deal with stress and anxiety. SKY at USC focuses on breathwork and meditation and is part of a larger organization called SKY Campus Happiness, which has over 102 chapters of these clubs across different colleges and universities in the United States. The goal of the organization is to help students and faculty cope with stress through a guided and evidence-based meditation technique, called Sudarshan Kriya Yoga, or SKY. 

“Mindfulness and perhaps meditation, getting extra sleep, figuring out ways that you can manage your own stress from an early age, I think is really critical to all sorts of health outcomes, but particularly cardiovascular health in this case,” Farzan said. 

Evital Kohan — a USC alum, SKY Campus Happiness advisor and one of the teachers of SKY Happiness Retreats — said, “We all pick up stress, we all pick up anxiety. We don’t really learn how to manage it, though. We learn how to do other things in our life, but have we ever been taught how to manage our own mind? This is where these tools are really important to add to our toolbox and to actually practice on a daily basis.” 

Another USC club, The Happy Hour, provides public mental health resources and speaker events for its members as well as fundraisers, such as The Happy Hour Concert, to donate to mental health organizations. 

“We want it to be more casual and have students get to know each other and normalize the conversation around mental health,” said Saphia Zaman, The Happy Hour founder and president. “Stress management is extremely important to just maintain a healthy well-being and that in turn can affect a lot of things. It could come out in more physical forms as well, like constant headaches, nausea, so it’s just important to overall maintain a healthy mental health.” 

“These results [we found in the study] were in relatively healthy, young adults. The fact that we’re starting to see cardiovascular risk emerge at this early age is important,” Farzan said. “Interventions early on in adolescents and young adults could potentially prevent later cardiovascular disease. Acknowledging the risk and understanding your health status will help people understand what needs to be done in order to improve their cardiovascular health in the long term.”