Worrying about your health could give you a heart attack

Stressing out about your health could be fatal, say Norwegian researchers (Rex)

Worrying about your health may end up giving you heart disease, a study has found.

Norwegian research shows that people who constantly worry about their health - even if they are healthy – are 70% more likely to develop heart disease than those who do not suffer the same levels of anxiety.

And those people who worry most are more likely to end up having a fatal heart attack, said the researchers from the University of Bergen.

MORE: Woman wins £35m on slot machine, gets steak dinner instead

MORE: Mum spends 50 years celebrating birthday on wrong date

The ‘monitoring and frequent check-ups of symptoms’ does not help in the long-term, they said.

The persistent desire to worry about health ends up ‘placing strain on bodily systems and, in turn, increasing the risk of cardiovascular diseases’.

The study was carried out charting the health of 7,000 people over 12 years.

The findings were then published in the British Medical Journal.

Although anxiety has long been known as a risk for causing heart disease, researcher believe their study is the first to look specifically at health anxiety.