A Good Word for Stress

The stress of modern living is blamed for a host of ills, and especially for triggering heart attacks. But the routine stress of daily living may be better than enforced inactivity for patients who have already had a heart attack. In fact, on-the-job pressure and competition are often good medicine for the recovered heart-attack victim, according to three New Jersey investigators.

"Rest and inactivity, once a cardiac lesion has healed, do not prolong life," say Drs. Marvin C. Becker and Jerome G. Kaufman of Newark's Beth Israel Hospital and Rutgers University's Wayne Vasey. In Circulation, published by the American Heart Association, they condemn too much rest as likely to lead to "physical and emotional incapacity." Physicians and family may be as much to blame as the heart patients themselves for fostering idleness. To rehabilitate a patient after an attack, the researchers suggest, "we must accept the philosophy that work is a normal part of living, and important for the physical and emotional well-being of the individual."

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