Study: How Angry Emotions Can Harm Blood Vessels

A recent study has shown that anger is the real enemy of blood vessels. Scientists have explained how emotions can cause harm.

A short burst of anger caused by memories of the past can prevent the blood vessels from “relaxing.” This negatively affects blood flow, says published in the journal of the American Heart Association (AHA) study.

How tells CNN, scientists studied how negative emotions (anger, sadness and anxiety), compared to neutral ones, affect the functioning of blood vessels. The study involved 280 adults, divided into four groups – each of them had its own tasks aimed at evoking certain emotions:

• remember something from the past that made you angry or worried;
• read a series of depressing sentences that cause sadness;
• counting to 100 many times to maintain an emotionally neutral state, and the like.

The scientists studied the cells that line blood vessels before, during and after performing the tasks. Researchers tried to look for signs of dilatation*, that is, enlargement and expansion. They found three ways in which anger influences the health of blood vessels:

1. it made it more difficult for blood vessels to dilate in response to ischemia, a condition in which cells do not receive enough oxygen;
2. it affected markers of cell damage (they are present on the surface and signal “injuries”) and their ability to self-heal;
3. After an eight-minute anger-inducing task, the effects on blood vessels were observed for 40 minutes. Changes can have a cumulative effect.

Anger leads to dysfunction of blood vessels, although this, scientists admitted, they do not yet fully understand. “Exploring the underlying relationship between anger and dysfunction may help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular disease,” said lead author Daichi Shimbo, MD, professor of medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. (USA). He says:

“We hypothesize that if you are a person who gets angry over and over again, then you chronically worsen the condition of your blood vessels. We haven't studied this yet, but it is likely that feelings of anger can lead to chronic problems with blood vessels.”

However, scientists did not notice significant changes in the walls of blood vessels after performing tasks associated with anxiety and despondency. According to Glenn Levin, MD and professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, USA), the study once again proves that there is a connection between mental health and the state of the cardiovascular system. It also shows that anger or stress can negatively affect the functioning of the heart and blood vessels, and even lead to diseases of this system.

*Vascular dilatation and dissection: Pathological vasodilation occurs when destabilization of the vascular wall leads to an increase in the diameter of the vessels.

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