Heart disease is often linked to high cholesterol, obesity, or lack of exercise. However, there is mounting evidence that suggests that mental health plays a crucial role in cardiovascular well-being. Stress, anxiety, and depression can silently strain the heart, increasing the risk of serious complications.

A recent study, published in Nature Human Behaviour, showed that loneliness has a significant impact on proteins present in a person's blood. For the study, researchers used data from more than 42,000 participants to explore whether the 9.3% who reported social isolation and 6.4% who reported loneliness had different levels of proteins in their blood compared with those who did not. The researchers then studied data that tracked the health of participants over an average 14-year period.

"We found around 90% of these proteins are linked to the risk of mortality," Dr Chun Shen, Fudan University in China, who is also the lead researcher said. "In addition, about 50% of the proteins were linked to cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke," he added.

Dr Shrey Kumar Srivastav, senior consultant at Sharda Hospital, said that subtle symptoms of heart disease, such as fatigue, shortness of breath, swelling in the lower legs, dizziness, and jaw pain, are often overlooked or attributed to stress and ageing. "Women, in particular, may experience atypical signs like extreme fatigue, indigestion, or upper abdominal pain instead of classic chest pain, leading to delayed diagnosis," he added.

Can Mental Health Issues Trigger Heart Diseases?

Chronic stress can trigger harmful cardiovascular effects, including elevated blood pressure, increased heart rate, and inflammation—key contributors to heart disease. Anxiety and depression further impact heart health by disrupting sleep patterns, raising stress hormone levels, and encouraging unhealthy habits like poor diet and inactivity.

Mental health issues like depression and anxiety have a profound impact on the heart. They don’t just affect emotions but can increase inflammation and put extra strain on the cardiovascular system, warns Dr Srivastav.

Certain risk factors, such as obesity and diabetes, disproportionately affect women, making them more vulnerable to heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). However, due to gender-specific symptom variations, heart disease in women often goes undiagnosed for longer.

Obesity is more prevalent in women than men and is a major risk factor for heart failure. Diabetes, too, has a greater impact on women’s heart health, yet diagnosis and treatment delays are common. Addressing this gap requires increasing awareness, training healthcare providers, and promoting early diagnostic tools,” explains Dr Srivastav.

How Can You Protect Your Heart?

A simple yet effective way to support heart health is by committing to a brisk 30-minute walk daily. Walking not only helps regulate blood pressure and manage weight but also improves circulation and reduces stress.

"Regular physical activity, paired with a heart-healthy diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, significantly lowers cardiovascular risks," advises Dr Srivastav.

Heart disease can often go undetected until a major event occurs, making routine screenings essential.

- For women: Begin screenings around age 30 and continue with regular checkups.

- For men: Start screenings at age 35.

Health screenings, including blood pressure checks, cholesterol tests, and electrocardiograms (ECGs), are critical for early detection of silent heart conditions.

In a recent episode of Soha Ali Khan’s YouTube podcast 'All About Her', actor Genelia D'Souza told viewers that she does not feed her children ghee over fears of blocking their arteries and causing heart damage.

She told Khan, "Ghee was never a very big part of my diet. I’ve always been more conscious because cholesterol issues run in my family. Whether it was non-vegetarian food or anything else, it was always on my mind, I didn’t want to go overboard.

"We start building habits early. You can't keep feeding children excessive amounts of certain foods and then expect them to suddenly not be overweight and head to the gym later in life. It has to make sense."

The 38-year-old mother-of-two soon clarified that she considers ghee to be a problem when consumed in excess. D'Souza, who follows a strict plant-based lifestyle, explained that ghee, a known superfood, stays far away from her diet and instead she prefers to consume sesame seeds (til) for similar benefits.

She also addressed questions about giving up ghee and butter, stating, "I enjoyed a little bit of ghee and butter, but only in tiny portions. So when I eventually gave it up, it wasn’t a big deal," while acknowledging the sensory appeal of ghee, "I know it’s very tasty and it smells amazing."

Is Ghee Indeed Bad For You?

Made from cow milk butter, ghee contains about 130 calories and 15 grams of fat on average. It is also known to be rich in Vitamin A, D, K and E as well antioxidants.

However due to its high saturated fat content, some experts claim ghee can raise bad cholesterol levels in some people. While saturated fats help control high cholesterol and promote good heart health only apply when it is consumed in moderation. Ghee consumed in excess is indeed unhealthy.

However, it also contains beneficial fats (like omega-3s & CLA) and fat-soluble vitamins, offering potential anti-inflammatory benefits in small amounts, making it a balanced choice for many when balanced with overall diet and lifestyle.

A 1999 Indian Journal of Dairy & Biosciences study also noted that when researchers studied Indian men in a rural population who ate high amounts of ghee, they showed a significantly lower prevalence of coronary heart disease.

High doses of medicated ghee decreased serum cholesterol, triglycerides, phospholipids, and cholesterol levels in those suffering from psoriasis, a chronic autoimmune skin condition causing rapid skin cell buildup, leading to red, scaly, itchy patches, often on scalp, elbows, knees and back.

Who Should Avoid Ghee?

Experts recommend those suffering from conditions such as heart, digestive and kidney issues as well as obesity to steer clear from the superfood. Cholesterol patients should also avoid ghee as it is rich in fatty acids that may increase blood pressure and increase the risk of heart disease.

Lastly, those suffering from jaundice should also avoid it as it can cause major problems for the liver. Doctors suggest consuming not more than two teaspoons of ghee every day as it may pose certain health risks.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new AI model which can predict more than 100 health conditions including cancer, mental health, cardiovascular issues and death using sleep study data.

SleepFM uses polysomnography, a comprehensive sleep assessment that utilizes various sensors to record brain activity, heart activity, respiratory signals, leg movements, eye movements and more to provide an accurate prediction of future disease risk, according to the study published in Nature on January 6.

Emmanuel Mignot, Craig Reynolds Professor in Sleep Medicine and co-senior author of the study, said, "We record an amazing number of signals when we study sleep. It’s a kind of general physiology that we study for eight hours in a subject who’s completely captive. It’s very data rich."

It remains unclear when SleepFM will be commercially available to the public and whether it will be incorporated into wearable technology such as watches and phones.

How Does It Work?

The AI model has been trained on nearly 600,000 hours of sleep data collected from 65,000 participants which had been split into five-second increments to combine multiple body signals, such as brain activity, heart activity, muscle activity, pulse and breathing and understand how they relate to each other.

James Zou, PhD, associate professor of biomedical data science and co-senior author of the study commented, "One of the technical advances that we made in this work is to figure out how to harmonize all these different data modalities so they can come together to learn the same language."

After being trained to identify and link different body signals, SleepFM was taught how to understand standard sleep analysis tasks such as different stages of sleep and diagnosing the severity of sleep apnea, a serious sleep disorder where breathing repeatedly stops and starts often due to airway blockage or the brain failing to signal muscles.

Once the model was seen successfully identifying sleep-related issues, it was paired with the sleep recordings and health data of 35,000 patients collected over 25 years for it to learn how to identify chronic diseases through nighttime body signals.

Which Diseases Can It Accurately Predict?

Particularly, SleepFM excelled at predicting Parkinson’s disease, dementia, hypertensive heart disease, heart attack, prostate cancer, breast cancer and death.

“We were pleasantly surprised that for a pretty diverse set of conditions, the model is able to make informative predictions,” Zou said.

Even though heart signals were prominently used to predict heart disease and brain signals were predominant in mental health predictions, the researchers noted that it was the combination of all the data modalities that achieved the most accurate predictions.

“The most information we got for predicting disease was by contrasting the different channels. Body constituents that were out of sync. A brain that looks asleep but a heart that looks awake, for example, seemed to spell trouble,” Mignot said.

Zhou added, "From an AI perspective, sleep is relatively understudied. There’s a lot of other AI work that’s looking at pathology or cardiology, but relatively little looking at sleep, despite sleep being such an important part of life.

"SleepFM is essentially learning the language of sleep."

A 24-year-old man living with dementia who passed away shortly after Christmas has donated his brain to medical research. Andre Yarham, from Dereham in Norfolk, was only 22 when his family first became concerned. His mother, Samantha Fairbairn, noticed changes in his memory and behaviour, including moments that felt out of character.

After medical consultations, Andre was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a rare condition linked to an abnormal protein mutation. Speaking to the BBC, Ms Fairbairn said her son made the decision to donate his brain in the hope that future families might be spared the same pain. “If this helps even one family spend a little more time with someone they love, then it means something,” she said, describing dementia as a “cruel disease.”

UK’s Youngest Dementia Patient Dies At 24, Leaves Brain To Science

Brain scans later showed unusual shrinkage, prompting a referral to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, where doctors confirmed the diagnosis. Ms Fairbairn told the BBC she experienced “so many emotions, anger, grief, and deep sadness for him.” She also stressed that dementia is not limited by age, saying it “doesn’t discriminate,” and adding that Andre was likely among the youngest patients diagnosed in the UK.

As his condition progressed, he moved into a care home in September last year when his needs became too complex for his family. Within weeks, he was using a wheelchair. Andre died on 27 December, and his brain has since been donated to Addenbrooke’s Hospital to support ongoing research.

In the final month of his life, Andre lost the ability to speak and could only make sounds. Even so, his mother said his core self remained. He held on to “his personality, his humour, his laughter, and his smile” until the end, according to The Independent.

Youngest Dementia Sufferer Dies: What Is Frontotemporal Dementia?

Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) refers to a group of uncommon, progressive brain disorders that cause nerve cell damage in the frontal and temporal lobes. This leads to changes in behaviour, personality, language, and sometimes movement. The condition often begins earlier than Alzheimer’s disease, typically between ages 45 and 65, and may present with symptoms such as impulsivity, emotional withdrawal, socially inappropriate actions, or speech difficulties. Memory loss is not always the earliest sign. There is currently no cure, although treatments can help manage symptoms, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

FTD is considered rare and most often affects middle-aged adults, but in exceptional cases, it can occur much earlier in life. Unlike Alzheimer’s disease, which usually begins with memory decline, FTD is more likely to start with noticeable changes in behaviour or personality.

Youngest Dementia Sufferer Dies: Symptoms of Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)

Symptoms of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) commonly include marked changes in personality and behaviour, such as apathy, impulsive actions, loss of empathy, reduced social awareness, repetitive behaviours, and neglect of personal care. Language problems are also common, including trouble finding words, understanding speech, or speaking clearly. Some people develop movement-related symptoms like stiffness, slowed movements, or tremors, as well as changes in eating habits or appetite. These symptoms gradually interfere with relationships and daily life as nerve cells in the frontal and temporal areas of the brain deteriorate, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“Dementia is an incredibly cruel disease, truly cruel,” Andre’s mother said. “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. With cancer, people can have treatment, they can go into remission, and they can still live meaningful lives. With dementia, there’s nothing like that.”