Why You Should Take Stress More Seriously

If you’re someone who frequently declares, “I’m so stressed!” then you might want to pay attention to this: Your risk of heart attackcould be double that of folks who don't think they're stressed, according to a new study. 

More on Shine: The Best Steps to Keep Your Stress in Check

The findings, by French researchers and published Wednesday in the European Heart Journal, showed that people who believe that they are stressed—and that the stress is affecting their health—have more than twice the risk of heart attack as those who don’t feel that way.

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“This indicates that individuals' perception and reality seem to be connected pretty well,” lead authorHerman Nabi, of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, told Yahoo! Shine in an email. “In other words, people seem to be aware when stress is affecting their health.”

The researchers analyzed the data of 7,268 men and women from a previous study, the British Whitehall II cohort, based on a questionnaire that asked the following: “To what extent do you consider the stress or pressure that you have experienced in your life has an effect on your health?" Participants chose from answers including “not at all,” “a little,” “moderately,” “a lot,” and “extremely.” They were also asked to rate their stress levels and other factors, including smoking, alcohol intake, diet, exercise and preexisting health conditions such as diabetes. 

People who answered the first question with “a lot” or “extremely” had a 2.12 times higher risk of having or dying from a heart attack compared with those who didn’t think stress was affecting their health. 

“Our ultimate goal in this research was to demonstrate [the idea that] individuals' perception of [how] stress impacts their own health is valid, and should be considered both in future research and in clinical settings,” Nabi said. “We wanted also to show that responses to stress differ greatly between individuals. In fact, a situation that is stressful for one person might not be stressful for another.”

While the findings may have merit, they offer “nothing new,” according to Dr. Paul Rosch, founder and board chairman of the American Institute of Stress, who is familiar with the study. 

“We’ve known for a long time, to quote the Greek philosopher Epictetus, that ‘men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them,’” he told Yahoo! Shine. “You can show definitively that people have a higher rate of heart attack if they feel they have too many demands on them at work or in life, whether it’s true or not. So if you perceive something, it’s as good as the real thing.” 

Rosch said he found the new study to be flawed because the participants who said they felt stressed were also more likely to be smokers and to have a baseline of poor health. “It would have been better to have started off with two groups having equivalent health status, and then show that perceived stress correlated with increased coronary events, or deaths, decades later,” he added. 

Still, he said, it certainly can’t hurt a person to be mindful of stress levels — as well as of the additional stress those levels may cause, "provided it encourages you to avoid unhealthy habits and improve your quality of life in other ways, but not if it leads you to worry more about things you can't control." 

People should just keep in mind that finding an effective way to reduce stress may take some time, since, as Nabi said, individuals react to situations in different ways.

“Things that are very distressing for some might be pleasurable for others, like a steep rollercoaster ride. So there’s nothing that’s a panacea,” Rosch noted. “Running, doing yoga or listening to music might work for some but be dull, boring and stressful for others.” 

Bottom line: Find what’s calming for you and stick with it. Your life could depend on it.

Pakistan volleyball crowd 'hit by suicide bomber'

At least 60 people have been killed after a suspected suicide bomb attack at a volleyball pitch in the troubled north-west of Pakistan, officials say.

Officials said the bomber drove a vehicle towards the field as people gathered to watch a match. Some sources suggest the death toll has reached 75.

The attack happened near Lakki Marwat, close to North and South Waziristan.

The Pakistani army has been conducting a campaign against the Taliban in the tribal areas since October.

Dozens of people were reported to be injured in Friday's attack. Several buildings collapsed, trapping people under rubble.

'Militant hub'

"The villagers were watching the match between the two village teams when the bomber rashly drove his double-cabin pick-up vehicle into them and blew it up," district police chief Mohammad Ayub Khan told AFP news agency.

Mr Khan told reporters the attack may have been in retaliation for attempts by locals to expel militants.

"The locality has been a hub of militants," he said.

"Locals set up a militia and expelled the militants from this area. This attack seems to be a reaction to their expulsion."

The BBC's Aleem Maqbool reports from Islamabad that among those killed are believed to be members of a local peace committee who have been campaigning for an end to the violence.

Mushtaq Marwat, a member of the group, told Pakistan's Geo TV that the attack occurred as the committee was meeting in a nearby mosque.

"Suddenly there was a huge blast. We went out and saw bodies and injured people everywhere," he said.

'Soft target'

Other witnesses recalled seeing a bright flash before hearing an ear-piercing explosion.

Some initial reports about the attack said the vehicle that exploded was stationary, or that a bomber had walked towards the volleyball pitch.

North and South Waziristan form a lethal militant belt from where insurgents have launched attacks across north-west Pakistan as well as into parts of eastern Afghanistan.

Our correspondent says it had been feared that while the army was congratulating itself on its campaign, militants had simply escaped to neighbouring areas such as the one where Friday's attack happened.

The number of people killed in militant attacks in Pakistan is fast approaching 600 in just three months, with no apparent end to the violence in sight, he adds.

Militants have attacked both "hard" targets, including army or intelligence offices, and "soft" ones such as markets or the crowd that was hit in Friday's bombing.

The attack came as a general strike was held in Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, in protest against a bombing there on Monday and riots that followed.

The bombing, which killed at least 43 people, targeted a Shia Muslim march and was claimed by the Taliban.

US aware 'Nigerian' prepared for terror attack

The US was aware that "a Nigerian" in Yemen was being prepared for a terrorist attack - weeks before an attempted bombing on a US plane.

ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos to Amsterdam before changing planes for a flight to Detroit on which he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb.

The Netherlands is to introduce body scanners on US flights within weeks.

Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst said Mr Abdulmutallab did not raise any concerns as he passed through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to board the flight.

She said the airport would be able to use body scanners on all flights to the US from the airport in three weeks. Nigerian authorities also said they would start using the machines next year.

Obama denounces lapses

Ms Ter Horst said that though the US had previously not wanted the scanners to be used because of privacy concerns, Washington had now agreed that "all possible measures will be used on flights to the US".

"It is not exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," she said.

US President Barack Obama has acknowledged unacceptable security failures.

He said a systemic failure allowed Mr Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, to fly to the US on 25 December despite family members warning officials in November that he had extremist views.

The source of the intelligence about "a Nigerian" in Yemen was reported as coming from the Yemeni government or from US intercept intelligence, which can refer to intercepted e-mail and phone calls.

Mr Obama said he wanted to know why a warning weeks ago from Mr Abdulmutallab's father did not lead to the accused being placed on a no-fly list.

"We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix flaws in the system," Mr Obama said.

Some passengers and crew tackled Mr Abdulmutallab in his seat about 20 minutes before landing in Detroit as he allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his underwear.

Initial investigations found he had used the explosive PETN and a syringe filled with liquid.

The Dutch interior minister described the bomb as professionally made but executed in an "amateurish" way.

She said Mr Abdulmutallab had passed through standard security checks, including a metal detector and a hand baggage scan, without raising suspicions.

Nigerian airports 'safe'

Mr Abdulmutallab has reportedly told investigators that he trained in Yemen with al-Qaeda.

He was living in Yemen from August to early December, the foreign ministry said, according to an earlier report from the official Saba news agency.

He had a visa to study Arabic at an institute in the capital, Sanaa.

Pope visits soup kitchen in first trip since attack

Pope Benedict XVI has had lunch with 150 needy and homeless people at a soup kitchen in Rome.

It was his first journey outside the Vatican since he was attacked during Christmas Eve Mass inside St Peter's Basilica.

A Vatican judge will decide within the next few weeks whether the 25-year-old Swiss woman who assaulted the Pope will face criminal charges.

She is under observation in a psychiatric facility near Rome.

There was exceptionally heavy security by Italian police as the Pope made the short drive from the Vatican to a soup kitchen in Trastevere run by a Roman Catholic lay community.

No marginalisation

The Pope stopped to greet people who had gathered outside the soup kitchen under the keen surveillance of Vatican and Italian security agents.

Then he had lunch at a table seated next to a man from Afghanistan and a young family from Romania.

In a short speech the Pope urged that no-one should be marginalised, abandoned or left alone in Italy today.

Before leaving he distributed sweets and gifts to all the children present.

Lithuania hosted secret CIA prisons

The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.

The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.

It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board.

Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA "black sites", media reports say.

In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius, the investigation found.

It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005.

In August this year, US media reports claimed that Lithuania, Poland and Romania all hosted secret CIA interrogation centres.

But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania's political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow.

It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.

Secret flights

The practice of "extraordinary rendition" and the long-suspected network of secret US detention facilities became among the most controversial aspects of the Bush administration's response to the 11 September attacks.

"Extraordinary rendition" is the tactic of capturing militant suspects in one country and transporting them to another without judicial oversight.

The BBC's defence and security correspondent Nick Childs says critics of the Bush administration saw it as a way of avoiding legal constraints and, in some cases, as they put it, "contracting out" torture - although American officials repeatedly denied the allegations.

The issue caused considerable strains between Washington and some of its key allies during President Bush's administration.

Many governments - not least the British - have been under pressure to disclose what they knew, Nick Childs says, and the tactics the Americans did or did not use, and how extensively, remain murky.

US officials have hinted at perhaps dozens of prisoners having been held in secret detention centres. A controversial European Parliament report, however, spoke of hundreds of so-called "rendition" flights.

So far, only one case has actually gone to trial. Recently an Italian court convicted more than 20 American agents in their absence of being involved in the abduction of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan in 2003.

US President Barack Obama announced early on that he was closing the foreign detention centre network.

Nigeria rebels attack oil pipeline

Armed men in the Niger delta of Nigeria say they have attacked an oil pipeline overnight, putting a two-month truce with the government in doubt.

A faction of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said it attacked the pipeline.

A spokesman said it was because the government was delaying peace talks due to the absence of ill President Umaru Yar'Adua, who is in Saudi Arabia.

Attacks have cost Nigeria millions in lost revenue over the years.

The faction said, in an e-mailed statement, that the "warning strike" was carried out by 35 men on five boats with assault rifles, rocket launchers and heavy-calibre machine guns.

It said the pipeline was in Abonemma, about 50km (30 miles) west of Port Harcourt.

Nigeria's military has not commented on the attack.

Peace talks were suspended when President Yar'Adua was hospitalised in late November in Saudi Arabia.

Mend said it would review the ceasefire within 30 days.

"While the Nigerian government has conveniently tied the advancement of talks on the demands of this group to a sick president, it has not tied the repair of pipelines, exploitation of oil and gas as well as the deployment and re-tooling of troops in the region to the president's ill health," it said.