Can stress cause a heart murmur?

Key takeaways

• Heart murmurs are caused by turbulent blood flow in your heart, and they may be harmless, or they might be caused by an underlying condition or structural abnormality.
• Stress is not a typical cause of heart murmurs, but it can impact your overall cardiovascular health, causing conditions like high blood pressure.
• In some cases, an increased heart rate caused by acute anxiety may cause a benign heart murmur.

Overview

Stress and anxiety can cause a variety of physical symptoms, including a racing heart and chest pain. But you may be wondering if it can actually cause a heart murmur — a whooshing, rasping, or blowing sound heard when listening to your heartbeat.

Stress isn’t typically listed as a cause of heart murmurs. However, emotional stress and anxiety may affect your overall cardiovascular health, and you may notice changes in your heartbeat and heart rate. Stress may also lead to conditions that can influence heart murmurs.

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What is a heart murmur?

A heart murmur is the sound of turbulent flow within your heart, which means the usual blood flow is disrupted in some way. This can be detected when a healthcare professional listens to your heart with a stethoscope and notices an unusual sound between heartbeats.

This unusual sound might be a whooshing or swishing sound, which occurs between the regular heartbeats sounds. It can happen when your heart squeezes (systolic murmur) or when it relaxes (diastolic murmur).

In many cases, heart murmurs are benign, or “innocent”. This means it’s not linked to an underlying condition, and it won’t be dangerous for your health. However, in some cases, heart murmurs indicate there are some abnormalities in your heart.

How can stress affect your heart?

While stress and anxiety are known to affect you emotionally, it may be surprising to know that they can affect you physically as well — including impacting your heart.

Benign heart murmurs may happen when blood flows through your heart faster than usual, such as when you’re feeling anxious. Anxiety – a common response to stress – can cause an increased heart rate and heart palpitations.

But stress and anxiety may affect your heart health in other ways.

For example, some 2024 research suggests that emotional stress is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), an umbrella term referring to conditions affecting your heart and blood vessels. Examples include coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, and heart failure. These may increase your risk of heart attack and stroke.

This happens because of the impact of stress on your brain. When you feel stressed, your brain releases certain hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol, which can increase inflammation throughout your body. This can raise your blood pressure and heart rate, which is associated with an increased risk of CVD.

What’s more, stress has been known to increase the likelihood of certain behaviors that play a role in negatively affecting heart health, including eating an unhealthy diet, smoking, and alcohol consumption.

Over time, untreated CVD may weaken and damage your heart, which may lead to a heart murmur. In this case, it’s not strictly stress that’s causing the heart murmur, but the underlying CVD.

Signs stress is affecting your heart

Without specific lab tests to check your heart health, it can be difficult to know if stress is affecting your heart. Many symptoms that appear to signal heart conditions, including chest pain, shortness of breath, and heart palpitations, may simply be symptoms of acute stress or a panic attack.

However, if these symptoms are severe or last a long time, affecting you even when there isn’t anything directly causing severe stress, you should consider speaking with a healthcare professional. They may conduct some tests, such as checking your blood pressure, to find out if prolonged stress is affecting your heart health.

Note that if you experience severe, sudden chest pain, this may be a sign of a medical emergency, and you should seek medical help right away.

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When to be concerned about a heart murmur

Heart murmurs caused by acute anxiety are considered benign and can go away on their own. You may also experience them regularly without any impact on your health. These are also known as physiologic heart murmurs. They’re generally more common in children and teenagers.

A physiologic heart murmur may be caused by:

• physical activity
• fever
• extreme anxiety
• anemia
• phases of rapid growth, such as adolescence
• hyperthyroidism
• pregnancy

However, abnormal heart murmurs usually indicate a heart condition or structural problem with one of the heart valves. An abnormal heart murmur may be caused by:

• Valve stenosis: A heart valve that’s tight, narrow, or stiff and doesn’t allow enough blood through.
• Valve regurgitation: A “leaky” valve that doesn’t completely close during heartbeats.
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: A genetic condition that leads to a thick heart muscle wall, which can cause turbulent blood flow.
• Aortic root aneurysm: Widening of the first part of your aorta.
• Septal defect: A hole in your heart.
• Endocarditis: An infection of the inner lining of your heart and/or heart valves.
• Rheumatic fever: The result of improperly treated strep throat, which can result in damage to your heart valves.

If you have an abnormal murmur, it may be a sign of an underlying heart condition. Symptoms that may indicate an abnormal murmur include:

• shortness of breath
• chest pain
• dizziness
• tachycardia (accelerated heart rate)
• persistent cough
• cyanosis (blue skin around your fingertips and lips)
• swelling in your legs or bloating in your abdomen
• fainting

You may also experience weight gain and excessive sweating.

If an underlying condition, such as hyperthyroidism or fever, is causing the murmur, you may also have symptoms from that condition.

Summary

Heart murmurs are common and, in many cases, harmless. Benign heart murmurs may happen when blood flows through your heart faster than usual, such as when you’re experiencing anxiety.

Stress isn’t a direct cause of heart murmurs, although it may affect your overall cardiovascular health by increasing inflammation and blood pressure.

If you think chronic stress is affecting your health, or if you think you may have a heart murmur, speak with a healthcare professional as soon as possible.

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