Kim Kardashian revealed she was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm in a teaser for the new season of her family’s reality TV show, “The Kardashians.” She appears to blame the diagnosis on stress — but doctors say that usually isn’t a direct cause.

In the clip shared Thursday, Kardashian, 45, is seen going in for an MRI scan and telling her family, “There was a little aneurysm.” She then appears to say she was told the cause was “just stress.” Footage from the teaser also features a sometimes emotional Kardashian talking about her difficult divorce with ex-husband Kanye West, who now goes by Ye.

While stress itself doesn’t create an aneurysm, it can raise blood pressure, which is related to aneurysm formation and growth, said Dr. Brian Snelling, director of cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery and director of the stroke program at Marcus Neuroscience Institute, part of Baptist Health South Florida.

“The real culprits are genetics, elevated blood pressure, smoking and age-related changes in the arteries,” he told CBS News.

“It is not proven that stress alone causes an aneurysm,” said Dr. Greg Albers, co-founder of health platform RapidAI and director of the Stanford Stroke Center, but adds stress can over time cause an increase in blood pressure which can make an individual more vulnerable to one.

A brain aneurysm is a “bulge or ballooning in a blood vessel in the brain,” the Mayo Clinic explains.

You can think of it as a weak spot in the artery — imagine a garden hose that has one spot where the rubber’s thin like balloon, instead of thick, said Dr. Adam Arthur, neurosurgeon and a chief medical officer at Medtronic, a medical device company.

“Over time, with pressure going through that hose, it’s caused a little sack,” he explained.

Brain aneurysms, which tend to be more prevalent in women, aren’t uncommon: “Around 1 in 50 adults have a brain aneurysm,” Snelling said. But, most people never know they have one.

“They are often found incidentally on scans done for unrelated reasons. Unless they grow large or rupture, they’re usually silent,” he said.

Most brain aneurysms aren’t serious, especially if they’re small, as most don’t rupture and usually don’t cause symptoms or cause health problems, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“Aneurysms themselves aren’t dangerous unless they leak or burst, which leads to a life-threatening brain bleed,” Snelling said.

Hemorrhagic strokes and subarachnoid hemorrhages are two types of brain bleeds related to ruptured brain aneurysms, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

The best prevention is controlling blood pressure, avoiding smoking and stimulants, screening at-risk populations and monitoring with imaging, he added.

Alleviating stress can be important in preventing a rupture, Arthur added, noting the development of aneurysms is “something that can happen to anybody, regardless of risk factors.”

Arthur said if a patient has risks factors — for example, two close relatives with aneurysms — screenings can be done to check for them.

“If somebody is very worried or has a lot of risk factors, that’s something that we can do for them,” he said, adding he hopes Kardashian’s news helps bring awareness.

“I don’t want to scare people unnecessarily, but anything that we can use to put more of a focus on women’s health and on how stroke can hurt women or cause disability, I think is something that we can make more positive,” he said.

Edited by

Nicole Brown Chau