Research finds anger can have negative impact on blood vessels
BOSTON - A new study finds that negative emotion can impact the health of your blood vessels.
Researchers at Columbia University took 280 healthy adults and randomly assigned them to recall feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety, or remain neutral for eight minutes. They found that anger, not sadness or anxiety, reduced the ability of the participants' blood vessels to dilate or open up. In other words, it made them stiffer which over time could lead to heart attack, stroke, or kidney disease.
The effects only lasted up to 40 minutes but if you're someone who angers easily and frequently, you could be doing lasting harm to your arteries. Scientists would also like to study whether anger management could help improve patients' cardiovascular risk.