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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Anger can harm your blood vessel function, study shows | |
By Madeline Holcombe, CNN | |
Updated: | |
3:23 PM EDT, Mon May 6, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
Does it ever feel as if your anger courses through your veins? Well, | |
that isn’t too far off, according to new research. | |
adversely affect blood vessel health, according to a study published | |
Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association. | |
“There have been some studies in the past that have linked the | |
feelings of anger, the feelings of anxiety and the feelings of sadness | |
to heart disease risk in the future,” said lead study author Dr. | |
Daichi Shimbo, professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at | |
Columbia University in New York City. | |
“This study was meant to figure out, ‘why is that?’” he said. | |
In the randomized trial, researchers divided 280 participants and gave | |
them a task that made them recall feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety | |
or neutrality for eight minutes. | |
Before and several times after the task, the researchers took measures | |
of the individuals’ vascular health. | |
Sadness and anxiety tasks didn’t show a significant change in those | |
markers compared with the neutral task — but anger did, Shimbo said. | |
“It looks like anger’s adverse effects on health and disease may be | |
due to its adverse effects on vascular health … the blood vessel | |
health itself,” he said. | |
While the new research is not the first study to make a connection | |
between emotions and cardiovascular impacts, it does shed light on how | |
the connection operates, said Dr. Joe Ebinger, an associate professor | |
of cardiology and director of clinical analytics for the Smidt Heart | |
Institute at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. He was not involved in the | |
research. | |
“This is one of the first well-done randomized studies and | |
placebo-controlled studies has really shown us that there are changes | |
in our vasculature that occur acutely in response to the emotions that | |
we’re feeling,” Ebinger said. | |
How 40 minutes could turn into a longer problem | |
Researchers in this study observed three major ways that anger impacted | |
blood vessel health, Shimbo said. | |
First, it made it harder for blood vessels to dilate in response to | |
ischemia, or a restriction, he said. Anger also affected cellular | |
markers of injury and their ability to repair themselves, Shimbo said. | |
After the eight-minute task meant to induce anger, the impacts on blood | |
vessels were seen for up to 40 minutes, he said. | |
That might not sound so bad on its own, but Shimbo said we should be | |
concerned about a cumulative effect. | |
“We speculate that if you’re a person that gets angry over and over | |
again, that you’re chronically impairing your blood vessels,” he | |
said. “We didn’t study this, but we speculate those kinds of | |
chronic insults from anger can lead to chronic adverse effects of blood | |
vessels.” | |
Don’t just grit your teeth through anger | |
Another question that the study didn’t investigate but should be | |
asked next is: ? | |
Anger is a human emotion, and you can’t and shouldn’t avoid feeling | |
it all together, Ebinger said. | |
The best approach is to learn to process feelings of anger without | |
letting it fester, said Dr. Brett Ford, associate professor of | |
psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough, in a . | |
Ask yourself: “What might be impeding on your energy or thoughts? | |
What are you protecting yourself from? What do you need that isn’t | |
being met?” said Deborah Ashway, a licensed clinical mental health | |
counselor based in New Bern, North Carolina. Neither Ford nor Ashway | |
was involved in the study. | |
“And then once you’re aware of it, you’re in control of it. | |
It’s no longer going to control you now,” she said, adding that is | |
the place from which you can decide how to move forward. | |
This latest study on just how anger affects the body might help in | |
encouraging people who experience a lot of anger to seek behavioral | |
therapies, Shimbo said. | |
Maybe there are ways — such as exercise or medication — to treat | |
the adverse effects of anger on blood vessels, he speculated. | |
“Understanding that the mechanism that’s there is the first step in | |
being able to help to treat it,” Ebinger said. “This isn’t about | |
denying anger. We’re all going to experience anger but (it’s about) | |
finding ways for us to be able to both control it and minimize it.” | |
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