Getting angry is bad for your health. And now we know why: a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association reveals that outbursts of anger have a deleterious effect on the ability of blood vessels to dilate, and can thus increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, especially for those who suffer of chronic cardiovascular disorders.
The link between anger and cardiovascular problems has been known for some time, and has now been demonstrated by various scientific research. However, it was not clear what the mechanism on which this relationship was based was. For this reason, the authors of the new study decided to monitor several markers of blood vessel health during an episode of anger, to see what happens in real time.
In their experiment, a group of 280 volunteers, all healthy, participated in four different activities. In the first they were asked to remember something that made them angry. In a second activity they were asked to think about a memory that stimulated anxiety. The third instead involved reading particularly sad texts, to test what happens to the blood vessels in case of sadness. And the fourth, control, consisted of repeatedly counting up to one hundred.
Before and after each activity, the researchers took a blood sample from each participant, to study some biomarkers that reflect the health of the endothelium, i.e. the tissue that lines our blood vessels. The analyzes showed that anger, unlike all other circumstances studied, directly affects the ability of the endothelium to dilate, making the blood vessels less elastic with effects that last up to 40 minutes after the end of the anger episode.
The next step will now be to better understand the molecular mechanisms by which anger triggers this endothelial vasoconstriction, because once discovered they could help develop therapies with which to reduce the risks related to anger and other cardiovascular risk factors.