At the same time lowering the stress-level and depressive symptoms. It has previously been theorized that therapies such as acupuncture may exert their effects through activation of DNIC. The gold standard in measuring pain sensitivity is by algometry. Recently a simple and handheld algometric device has been designed to asses pressure pain sensitivity. The PPS measure has in patients with IHD been found to be significantly correlated to the major depression inventory score, WHO5’s well-being index as well as to the SF-36 quality of life score. Several studies have evaluated the effect of various stressreducing interventions in patients with IHD and some have shown to improve the prognosis and to reduce the risk of new cardiovascular events. We hypothesize that an intervention built on an increased focus on stress and the ability to perform stress reduction should be beneficial for patients with IHD. In analogy to people with diabetes measuring blood glucose levels, a therapy based on a daily semi-objective stress-measurements based on PPS followed by stress-reducing actions theoretically leads to increased empowerment and may have a positive effect on stressparameters. Acupressure, i.e. applying a continuous pressure for approximately one minute at specific hyperalgesic points at the body, has been shown to reduce both local and spreading pain in chronic low back pain and neck pain syndromes and we have observed that acupressure results in an acute reduction in pain sensitivity and PPS. Thus we hypothesized that the combination of daily selfmeasurements of PPS aiming at increased empowerment followed by acupressure aiming to restore DNIC, together would resolve in a reduction of the following elements of chronic stress: Depressive symptoms measured by MDI, general well-being measured by WHO-5, and physically and mentally QOL measured by SF-36 QOL-score. Aiming to test this hypothesis we performed an observer blinded randomized clinical trial with blinded outcome assessment over 3 month in which the active group measured PPS twice daily followed by acupressure as mandatory action. Our primary end point was changes in MDI. In the present randomized interventional trial we found, that in patients with stable IHD the combination of daily self-measurements of PPS followed by acupressure and reflection on PPS as a surrogate for current stress-level resulted in a modest but statistically significant improvement in PPS, MDI and WHO-5. This beneficial effect of the intervention program was more pronounced in subgroups of patients with higher baseline levels of components of the chronic stress syndrome, such as elevated MDI, as well as the combination of an elevated PPS and CSS. These subgroup analyses, however, were hampered by a limited sample size. The primary endpoint was a reduction in MDI. MDI was chosen as a well validated often used psychometric questionnaire on depressive symptoms.