Women and the medical profession also mostly overlook stress. Stress can do things like increase the clotting of the heart, narrow the arteries, clotting of blood in the heart and narrowing of the arteries, increase the catecholamines, increase the chances of gaining weight, but also, when people are under stress they manage it by overeating, overworking, under-sleeping, getting angry and upset. So, stress can affect the heart both directly in biological ways, as well as indirectly on how we cope with it.