Depression is as bad for your heart as high cholesterol

 (Radist)
When you think of heart attacks, you might assume the most common causes are smoking, high cholesterol, or obesity. Mental health issues probably don't spring to mind. But a new study suggests that depression poses just as great a risk to your heart health as those more familiar heart disease contributors.
In a new analysis, German researchers looked at health information from 3,428 European men, ages 45 to 74, who were followed for 10 years. And it turned out, dying from cardiovascular disease during the study period was as strongly associated with depression as it was with several of the classic “big five” heart disease risk factors: obesity, high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking.
Depression—which for this study, was determined by a checklist of mood symptoms, including anxiety and fatigue—accounted for about 15 percent of cardiovascular and coronary heart disease deaths, and high cholesterol and obesity for 8 to 21 percent. Diabetes posed less of a risk, accounting for 5 to 8 percent of heart-related deaths.
Only two risk factors accounted for more cardiovascular deaths than depression: smoking (between 17 and 20 percent) and high blood pressure (between 30 and 34 percent). Writing in the journal Atherosclerosis, the authors conclude that “depressed mood and exhaustion holds a solid middle position within the concert