The Shining Effect: When Stress Hijacks Your Brain and Hits Your Heart

If you’ve never spent a winter at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, you have no idea what you’re missing.  As you probably know, the Stanley is famous for inspiring one of the most disturbing stories in modern film history: The Shining.

And honestly, I can’t think of a more extreme picture of stress taking over the mind and sending the body into full alarm.

But then again… it’s only a movie, right?

Most of us treat stress like it's a bad feeling. We tell ourselves it’s just a mood we're in because we had a rough day or an angry conversation at home. We don’t think of it as anything close to being chased down a hallway by a maniac with an axe.

But here’s the problem: your body doesn’t rank stress by intensity.

Chronic, everyday stress still gets processed like an emergency broadcast. And one of the main places that signal lands… is your heart.

The simple truth is that your brain and your heart are in constant conversation. When your mind perceives threat (whether it’s worry, anxiety, regret, or constant pressure) the brain activates the body’s stress response systems.

That response isn’t abstract. It’s measurable.

Research shows mental stress can cause sudden rises in heart rate and blood pressure, along with increases in inflammatory signals and even temporary vessel dysfunction.

Over time, repeated activation can become a “wear and tear” effect because your body is doing what it was designed to do in danger: mobilize energy, tighten focus, prepare for action.

The problem is that modern stress often turns from a short sprint into a marathon loop.  And that loop matters a lot.

In fact, the association between mental health strain and heart risk is strong enough that large-scale research keeps flagging it.

A major 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis (over 22 million people) found that several mental health disorders diagnosed before heart events were associated with a significantly higher risk of acute coronary syndrome — including anxiety disorders and PTSD.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that anxiety “causes” heart attacks, but it does mean chronic distress is not “just emotional.” It can easily become a meaningful part of your cardiovascular risk future.

Even the chemistry of stress shows up in the data. A 2024 meta-analysis reported that people with higher levels of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline had higher cardiovascular disease risk.

And anxiety is also linked with hypertension in very large pooled research. This matters, because blood pressure is one of the most direct ways stress can press on the heart over time.

So what do we do with this?

I like to approach this problem with a few practical actions, including a Longevity Reframe that I repeat often. It goes something like this:

“Daily stress management is how I protect the long-term health of my heart.”

And here are a few simple interventions I draw on when I get overly tense:

• Downshift your nervous system (2 minutes): slow nasal breathing, longer exhales.

  
  

• Move your body (10 minutes): a walk is enough to relieve tension and shift the signal.

  
  

• Change the environment: step outside — light + space calms the loop.

  
  

• Reconnect: one honest conversation with a family member or close friend can quickly reduce isolation and load.

  
  

• Label the source: write one sentence — “Here’s where this stress is coming from… and here’s one thing I can do about it right now.”

  
  

In The Shining, Jack Nicholson’s character ends up being left out in the cold, separated from the ones he was trying to destroy.  And that’s a helpful image for real life, too.

Your goal isn’t to “never feel stress.” It’s to move it out of the center of the house (out of the driver’s seat) so it stops screaming at your heart.

The practices I mentioned above are small things, but they’re powerful because they teach your nervous system a new message: we’re safe enough to relax.

And when the brain changes the signal, the heart can get back to doing  what it was created to do—beat steady, and keep you moving forward for a long, long time.

---

Want more simple, science-based longevity insights? Just scroll down to subscribe to my newsletter and receive my free eBook.