14 DAY TRIAL // Don't let anger get to you, experts say, or it may very well kill you. This is the conclusion a group of researchers has come to, following a new series of scientific studies. Publishing the results in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the team says that people who expose themselves to anger or other similar strong emotions and have a heart condition are subject to danger, on account of the fact that blood flow irregularities, which occur when a person is irritated, can cause severe damage to the heart. Cardiac arrest, when no more blood is pumped through the body, is the most common event to ensue.
“It's definitely been shown in all different ways that when you put a whole population under a stressor that sudden death will increase. Our study starts to look at how does this really affect the electrical system of the heart,” Dr. Rachel Lampert, an investigator at the Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, explains. She adds that events such as earthquakes and floods, wars, and even football games can lead to a surge in heart attack cases among those individuals who have a faint heart.
In order to get the most conclusive results, Lampert invited test subjects to her lab and then had them remember one of their most recent anger episodes. At the same time, the electrical instability of their hearts was measured via a technique called T-Wave Alternans. “These were people we know already had some vulnerability to arrhythmia. We found in the lab setting that yes, anger did increase this electrical instability in these patients,” the scientist tells Reuters in an interview.
The next stage of the study was to follow the progress of the participants for up to three years. During this time, the team looked over the test subjects' medical charts, searching for cardiac arrests or any other type of condition associated with a weak heart. “The people who had the highest anger-induced electrical instability were 10 times more likely than everyone else to have an arrhythmia in follow-up. It says yes, anger really does impact the heart's electrical system in very specific ways that can lead to sudden death,” Lampert points out.
Still, she shares, the results of her study shouldn't be held as being true for completely healthy people as well. Although they may also experience some side-effects from getting really angry, their general health is less likely to get affected so drastically. “How anger and stress may impact people whose hearts are normal is likely very different from how it may impact the heart which has structural abnormalities,” the researcher concludes.