Can Hair Predict Heart Attack Risk?

Results of a new study suggest that doctors maybe able to predict the risk of a heart attack by analyzing hair samples.

One major contributing factor to heart attack risk is chronic stress and new research has shown that stress hormones found in hair can determine approximate heart attack risk.

Cortisol is known as a stress hormone, meaning that as we become more stressed over life, our bodies produce more of it as we become more agitated.

Researchers collected hair samples of heart attack victims admitted to the Meir Medical Centre in Kfar-Saba, Israel and analyzed them for stress hormone levels.

They were able to identify those men under stress by simply measuring the level of cortisol in their hair samples.

Because they took samples measuring more than 1 centimeter, they were able to find those men who had been under stress for quite some time.

Their study can be found in Friday’s online issue of the journal Stress.

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