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Frequent or chronic reduction in heart rate variability (HRV) is a powerful predictor of cardiovascular disease, and psychological stress has been suggested to be a co-determinant of this reduction. Recently, we evaluated various methods to measure additional HRV reduction in everyday life and to relate these reductions to psychological stress. In the current paper, we thoroughly evaluate these methods and add two new methods in both newly acquired and reanalyzed datasets. All of these methods use a subset of 24 h worth of HRV and movement data to do so: either the first 10 min of every hour, the full 24 h, a combination of 10 min from three consecutive hours, a classification of level of movement, the data from day n to detect episodes in day n + 1, or a range of activities during lab calibration. The method that used the full 24 h worth of data detected the largest percentage of episodes of reduced additional HRV that matched with self-reported stress levels, making this method the most promising, while using the first 10 min from three consecutive hours was a good runner-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worry is an important mediator in the relation between stressors and health. This pilot study examined whether a smartphone-based in time worry-reduction training was feasible and improved physiological health (i.e. increased heart rate variability [HRV]). A total of 26 high-worriers were randomised to an experimental or active-control condition (EC and CC respectively). Participants in both conditions registered emotions 5 times daily for a month. The EC additionally received worry-reduction training with mindfulness exercises. Primary outcomes were feasibility and HRV measured at baseline, after 2 weeks (halfway), and at 4 weeks (post-intervention). Both training conditions were feasible and well received. HRV increased in the EC and CC, but this increase did not differ between conditions. Preliminary findings suggest that both training conditions are feasible and might improve HRV, which is an important predictor of cardiovascular disease. This pilot study only provided preliminary evidence, but it laid the groundwork for future randomised controlled trials that ought to include more participants and a waitlist control group in order to get more definitive evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the western world. Frequent or chronic reductions in heart rate variability (HRV) are a powerful predictor of cardiovascular disease. Psychological stress has been suggested to be an important factor in the development of reduced HRV. Recently, Verkuil et al. (2016) introduced a laboratory-based method to measure additional HRV reduction in everyday life, and reductions in HRV related to psychological stress. In the current paper, we discuss alternative methods to detect additional HRV reductions, in real life data sets without the necessity of laboratory-based calibration, and even in existing data sets. All of these methods use a subset of 24 h' worth of HRV and movement data to do so: either the first 10 min of every hour, the full 24 h, a combination of 10 min from three consecutive hours, or a classification of level of movement. We also present a method to visualize HRV and movement data to be able to detect episodes of reduced additional HRV optically. The method that used the full 24 h' worth of data detected the largest percentage of episodes of reduced additional HRV that actually match with self-reported stress levels, making this method the most promising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Self‐esteem moderates the relationship between stress and (cardiovascular) health, with low self‐esteem potentially exacerbating the impact of stressors. Boosting self‐esteem may therefore help to buffer against stress. Subliminal evaluative conditioning (SEC), which subliminally couples self‐words with positive words, has previously been successfully used to boost self‐esteem, but the existing studies are in need of replication. In this article, we aimed to replicate and extend previous SEC studies. The first 2 experiments simultaneously examined whether SEC increased self‐esteem (Experiment 1, n = 84) and reduced cardiovascular reactivity to a stressor in high worriers (Experiment 2, n = 77). On the basis of these results, the 3rd experiment was set up to examine whether an adjusted personalized SEC task increased self‐esteem and reduced cardiac activity in high worriers (n = 81). Across the 3 experiments, no effects were found of SEC on implicit or explicit self‐esteem or affect or on cardiovascular (re)activity compared to a control condition in which the self was coupled with neutral words. The results do not support the use of the subliminal intervention in its current format. As stress is highly prevalent, future studies should focus on developing other cost‐effective and evidence‐based interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress-related cognitive processes may occur outside of awareness, here referred to as unconscious stress, and affect one's physiological state. Evidence supporting this idea would provide necessary clarification of the relationship between psychological stress and cardiovascular (CV) health problems. We tested the hypothesis that increases in mean arterial pressure (MAP) and total peripheral resistance (TPR) and decreases in heart rate variability (HRV) would be larger when threatening stimuli are presented outside of awareness, or subliminally, compared with neutral stimuli. Additionally, it was expected that trait worry and resting HRV, as common risk factors for CV disease, would moderate the effect. We presented a subliminal semantic priming paradigm to college students that were randomly assigned to the threat ( n = 56) or neutral condition ( n = 60) and assessed changes from baseline of MAP, TPR, and HRV. Level of trait worry was assessed with the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. The findings indicate that CV activity changed according to the hypothesized pattern: A higher MAP and TPR and a lower HRV in the threat condition compared with the neutral condition were found with practically meaningful effect sizes. However, these findings were only statistically significant for TPR. Furthermore, changes in CV activity were not moderated by trait worry or resting HRV. This is the first study to explicitly address the role of subliminally presented threat words on health-relevant outcome measures and suggests that unconscious stress can influence peripheral vascular resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Several studies have shown that perseverative, worrisome thoughts are prospectively related to subjective health complaints (SHC) and that a short worry postponement intervention can decrease these complaints. As SHC and worry are prevalent and costly, we tested whether the intervention can be offered online to reduce these complaints in the general population.Design: A randomized parallel-group trial was conducted with self-selected participants from the general population.Methods: Via the research website, 996 participants were instructed to register their worrying for 6 consecutive days. The intervention group was instructed to postpone worry to a special 30-min period in the early evening. The Subjective Health Complaints inventory, as administered before and after the intervention, and daily worry frequency and duration were considered the primary outcomes.Results: Three hundred and sixty-one participants completed the study. Contrary to our expectation, the registration group (n = 188) did not differ from the intervention group (n = 163) in SHC (ηp² = .000, CI [0.000-0.003]), or in worry frequency or duration. Nevertheless, the different worry parameters were moderately related to SHC (r between .238 and .340, p ≤ .001).Conclusions: In contrast to previous studies using pen-and-pencil versions of the worry postponement intervention, this study suggests that a direct online implementation was not effective in reducing SHC and worry. Overall, participants had high trait worry levels and reported difficulty with postponing worrying. Reducing SHC and worries via the Internet might require more elaborate interventions that better incorporate the advantages of delivering interventions online.Statement Of Contribution: What is already known on this subject? The perseverative cognition hypothesis argues that perseverative cognition, such as worry and rumination, acts as a mediator by which psychosocial stress may produce negative health effects. Prior research has indeed shown that worry and subjective health complaints (SHC) are prospectively related, but causality studies - that is, showing that changes in worry induce changes in health outcomes - are scarce and have mainly been conducted in young samples. These studies showed that reducing worry, using a worry postponement intervention, can reduce daily worrying and SHC. What does this study add? Trait and daily worrying are associated with SHC. An online worry postponement intervention is ineffective in reducing worry and SHC. Paper-and-pencil interventions cannot directly be used as online interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives In this study, we tested whether high levels of daily worrying are associated with linking, a tendency to overvalue the attainment of specific lower level goals for attaining higher level goals, and more specifically the attainment of experiencing happiness. Methods Thirty-two patients suffering from work stress complaints and awaiting a stress management treatment and 31 healthy adults, who formed the comparison group, filled in a goal linking questionnaire and two widely used trait worry questionnaires. Subsequently, they reported the frequency and duration of worry during 14 consecutive days and nights. Results The patients suffering from work stress complaints scored higher on the linking questionnaire and worried almost twice as much as the healthy comparison group, especially during the night-time. Furthermore, goal linking was a stronger predictor of the frequency and duration of worry in daily life than the trait worry questionnaires and this was independent of the observed group differences in daily worry. Conclusions These findings provide evidence that people who believe that their happiness is strongly dependent on the attainment of specific lower level goals worry frequently in daily life. Linking seems to be at least partly responsible for the excessive worry found in high work stress. Practitioner points Worry is elevated in patients seeking professional help for work stress complaints, compared to healthy controls, The higher levels of worry in the patient group were related to elevated tendencies to overvalue the attainment of specific lower level goals as a means to attain higher level goals ('linking')., It could be beneficial for high worriers to learn how to reduce linking tendencies., No strong inferences on the direction of the association between worry and linking can be made, as we relied on correlational data in which a linking questionnaire predicted worry in daily life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) is a widely used self report scale to assess pathological worry. Several studies have shown that the paper-and-pencil version of the PSWQ shows satisfactory psychometric properties. Yet, it is unknown whether the PSWQ is suited to be administered on Internet. As the amount of assessments conducted online is vastly increasing, we examined the factor structure, predictive validity and reliability of the online version of the PSWQ in a large community sample (N =1025). Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the best fit to the data was provided by a one factor model wherein the reverse-worded items also loaded on a separate method factor. In a second part of the study a self-selected subsample of the total sample (n =189) kept a log of the frequency and duration of worry episodes for six consecutive days. Worry frequency and worry duration were both predicted by the PSWQ, thereby lending support to its predictive validity. These findings provide preliminary evidence that the online version of the PSWQ possesses psychometric properties that are similar to the paper-and-pencil version. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In daily life, not stressful events themselves but their sustained cognitive representation is likely to cause prolonged physiological activity, which is believed to lead to a pathogenic state and finally somatic disease. The typically human ability to make cognitive representations of past stressful events (rumination) or feared events in the future (worry) is called perseverative cognition (PC). PC is associated with increased activity in various bodily systems, and there is emerging evidence that it mediates the prolonged effects of stressors on physiology and on disease. Yet, there are strong reasons to believe that people may not be aware of the greater part of their stress-related cognitive processes, while several studies suggest that these processes may still cause increased physiological activity, during sleep as well as during waking. This may imply that unconscious PC is an even more important source of prolonged stress-related activity than conscious PC. Thus, ‘unconscious stress’ research has the potential to become a new important area and may yield new important markers of chronic stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Slow cardiovascular (CV) recovery after stress is a predictor of adverse CV outcomes. Perseverative cognition (PC) about stress has been hypothesized to co-determine slow recovery. In the present study, it was investigated whether two types of trait PC, i.e. trait worry and trait rumination, predicted delayed cardiac recovery after a cognitive stressor. Furthermore, it was examined whether explicit state PC (i.e. negative intrusive thoughts) or implicit state PC (i.e. automatic vigilance) additionally predicted delayed cardiac recovery. Fifty-nine participants performed a stressful task, which consisted of an unsolvable synonym task. After a 6-minute recovery period, participants reported on their level of negative intrusive thoughts (i.e. explicit state PC), and performed a lexical decision task (LDT) to measure automatic vigilance for task-related information (i.e. implicit state PC). Cardiac activity was continuously measured using heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV). Trait worry and rumination were measured by the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS), respectively. The results showed that high trait worriers had a slower HR recovery from the cognitive stressor compared to low trait worriers. They also showed delayed HRV recovery, but only when the tendency to dwell upon one''s negative mood (the ‘brooding’ subscale of the RRS) was low. Slow HR recovery was associated with high levels of negative intrusive thoughts and with automatic vigilance, but in the unexpected direction for the latter. These results provide evidence that delayed cardiac recovery is associated with trait as well as state PC, and suggest that brooding attenuates the HRV suppressing effect of high trait worry. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Worry has been associated with adverse mental and somatic health outcomes, which have been attributed to the pathogenic physiological activity caused by worry. However, experimental evidence is scarce, and existing studies did not address whether the physiological effects of worry do actually exceed those of mere mental load during cognitive problem solving. In the present experiment, heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) of fifty-three participants were continuously measured during induced worrying, problem solving concerning issues that were not personally relevant, and relaxation. The results showed that HR was higher and HRV lower during both worrying and problem solving than during relaxation. Differences in emotional responses did not account for these results. This suggests that mere mental load is responsible for - at least a part of - the physiological effects of worry. Consequently, long term health effects of worry might be due to prolonged mental load of worry rather than to its emotional aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent work suggests that the ability to disengage attention from threatening information is impaired in people who suffer from anxiety and dysphoria. It has been suggested that this impaired ability to disengage from threat might specifically be associated with the tendency to perseverate about threat (i.e., worry), which is a main characteristic of anxiety disorders and a wide range of other psychopathologies. However, no studies have yet addressed this issue. The present study examined whether trait worry as well as worry intensity after experimental worry induction are associated with impaired ability to disengage attention from threatening cues (angry faces), independently from or in conjunction with anxiety. Sixty-one participants performed a visual cueing experiment that required detection of a target stimulus at one of two possible locations. Prior to the target neutral, happy or angry facial cues appeared at one of these two locations; when there is a relatively long period between the cue and the target (>300ms), an overall faster responding to invalidly cued trials relative to validly cued trials is believed to indicate inhibition of return (IOR) to a recently attended location. A reduced IOR for angry faces was only found when both trait worry and anxiety were high. When anxiety was kept constant, both trait worry and state worry were associated with enhanced IOR for neutral faces instead. The results seem to suggest that specific threat-related deficiencies in IOR may be a function of the co-occurrence of worry and anxiety. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Worry is crucial in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders and has been associated with several other adverse health outcomes. Yet, little is known about the frequency and perseveration of worry in daily life, and its predictability by widely used trait questionnaires. In this study 432 students completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait version (STAI-T) and kept a log of worry frequency and duration during six consecutive days and nights. The results showed that worry is a very common phenomenon that is predicted by the two trait worry questionnaires, independent of trait anxiety. The often clinically utilized PSWQ predicted worry duration better than the WDQ, and exclusively predicted night-time worry and several other indices of perseverative and potentially pathogenic worry. Although this study provides some support for the predictive validity of the PSWQ and the WDQ, these questionnaires did not account for the larger part of variance in daily worry. Future studies of worry and its associated perseverative processes should consider using momentary assessments. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Stress and anxiety are risk factors for cardiovascular (CV) disease. Worry might be a mediator of their risks by prolonging their cognitive representation and concomitant CV activity. We hypothesized that daily stressors and worry, and trait anxiety and trait worry would be associated with high heart rate (HR) and low heart rate variability (HRV) during waking and the subsequent nocturnal sleep period, and that worry would mediate the effects of daily stressors. Low HRV and high HR are physiological risk factors for CV disease. Using an hourly diary, stressors, worry frequency and duration, and biobehavioral variables were measured during one day in 52 healthy subjects. During this time and the subsequent nocturnal sleep period, ambulatory ECG was measured. Stressors, worry and traits were related to higher HR and lower HRV during waking, and the effects of stressors and worry were extended into the sleeping period. Worry duration mediated the effects of stressors. The results were largely independent of biobehavioral variables including sleep quality. The results support the notion that worry, by prolonging CV activity, is a mediator of the CV risks of stress. They also imply a role for unconscious cognitive representation of stress. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study examines whether worry is prospectively associated with somatic complaints and whether a worry reduction intervention can decrease these complaints. One hundred and seventy-one high school students (16–17  years old) kept a log of their worry duration and frequency for 6 days, of whom half were instructed to try to postpone worrying to a special 30-min worry period each day (‘postponers’). Somatic symptoms during ‘the last 3 days’ were assessed before and after the 6 days. At follow-up, postponers reported fewer complaints than controls, controlled for baseline. This reduction appeared to be mediated by worry duration, and pertained to, amongst others, lower back pain, neck pain, coughing/bronchitis, breathing difficulties and stomach pains. Thus, daily worry appears to be prospectively related to a broad set of somatic complaints, and its effect might be reversed by a simple intervention. Possible underlying mechanisms include prolonged physiological activity and illness-related perseverative cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Perseverative cognition, as manifested in worry and rumination, is a common response to stress, but biopsychological models of stress and health have largely ignored it. These models have generally focused on physiological activation that occurs during stress and have insufficiently addressed effects that occur in anticipation of, or following, stressful events. We argue that perseverative cognition moderates the health consequences of stressors because it can prolong stress-related affective and physiological activation, both in advance of and following stressors. We review evidence that worry, rumination, and anticipatory stress are associated with enhanced cardiovascular, endocrinological, immunological, and neurovisceral activity. The findings yield preliminary support for our hypothesis, suggesting that perseverative cognition might act directly on somatic disease via enhance activation via the cardiovascular, immune, endocrine, and neurovisceral systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Several theories of the stress-disease link have now incorporated prolonged activation. This article argues that these theories still lack an important element, that is, the cognitive nature of the mechanism that causes stress responses to be sustained. The perception of stress and the initial response to it do not automatically lead to prolonged activation. The active cognitive representations of stressors need to be prolonged in order to extend their physiological concomitants. We call this mediating process perseverative cognition, and it is manifested in phenomena such as worry, rumination, and anticipatory stress. We summarize evidence suggesting that these phenomena are indeed associated with physiological activation, including cardiovascular, endocrinological and immunological parameters. This evidence is still far from sufficient, due to the many methodological insufficiencies in the studies involved. Nevertheless, it makes clear that cognitive phenomena characterized by perseverative cognition may be likely candidates to mediate the effects of stress sources on somatic disease. We also argue that there is a dearth of evidence supporting the role of prolonged activation. There are a limited number of studies demonstrating prolonged activity related to stressors and emotional episodes, and their methodologies often do not allow unambiguous conclusions. Even more important, the crucial assumption that prolonged activation actually leads to pathogenic states and disease has received hardly any attention yet and therefore is still largely unsupported. There are only a few studies that showed that anticipatory responses and slow recovery from stress predicted disease states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

No abstract available Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this study we examined the prospective relationships between perseverative thoughts, internalizing negative emotions, and somatic complaints in children aged 9–13, and evaluated whether a perseverative thoughts intervention had a beneficial effect on these experiences. Children (N =227) from 7 primary schools in Leiden, the Netherlands, recorded their perseverative thoughts during one week, 138 of whom were instructed to postpone these thoughts to a special 30min period in the early evening. Children who had received the postponement instructions showed a reduction in the frequency of perseverative thoughts, and girls also in the duration of them. Girl''s perseverative thoughts were positively associated with the number of somatic complaints and with negative emotions. The postponement intervention also seemed to reduce somatic complaints in the seventh grade children. These findings confirm the previously found prospective relationship between perseverative thoughts and children''s well-being and provide initial validation for the use of the postponement intervention to reduce perseverative thoughts in this age group, particularly for girls. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]