Remember the old bumper sticker, "If you're not [angry], you're not paying attention?" Looks like it's time for a new one reading, "If you're not angry, you're hurting your health." A small study published in the November issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry compared "Ninety-two healthy adults engaged in stress-challenge tasks, during which cardiovascular responses, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis responses (i.e., cortisol), emotional expressions (i.e., facial muscle movements), and subjective emotional experience (self-reported) were assessed." The authors concluded that "Analyses of facial expressions revealed that the more fear individuals displayed in response to the stressors, the higher their cardiovascular and cortisol responses to stress. By contrast, the more anger and disgust (indignation) individuals displayed in response to the same stressors, the lower their cortisol levels and cardiovascular responses." The abstract of the study is available for free here, and a summary provided by womenshealth.gov is available here.
Okay, the title of this post was a bit of a joke, but I got a chuckle out of it. :)
Technorati Tags: heart disease; stress
MeSH Tags: Anger; Fear; Heart Diseases; Stress, Psychological
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