Anger Kills!

 

Anger Kills!

By Anita Bern

 

Anger is an emotion that can damage your mental and physical health. This is a fact that can be supported with scientific evidence about how anger works on a physiological level.

Anger triggers the body's fight-or-flight response, a biological mechanism that is genetically coded. This automatic anger response pumps stress hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline into your blood so your body can physically respond to a perceived threat.

Does anger make your blood boil? These chemical reactions to anger do raise your blood pressure and heart beat high above the normal. The circulation is impeded and the lack of oxygen causes chest pain. Your body also releases chemicals to clot the blood - and that can potentially form a clot that can travel to your brain or heart, resulting in a heart attack or stroke. The communication between the brain and the heart (and probably other organs too) is disrupted, which can lead to a host of serious health problems.

Your whole body is tense, and especially the muscles. Tense muscles in your neck and head can cause spasms, migraines and insomnia. Lung function can also get compromised by anger. Since the release of acids in the stomach is amplified by the anger response, that can result in ulcers and acid reflux.

Your whole body is in survival mode! All bodily functions that are not absolutely essential to surviving - like the digestive process, cell production, immunological defenses, body maintenance, and healing - are put on hold until the threat is dealt with. Suppressing the body's immune response makes it more susceptible to chronic inflammation.

Even your brain chemistry is altered. It has long been observed that anger impairs one's thinking, learning, decision making and memory. But the consequences of stress caused by an anger reaction can be even worse: chronic stress seems to alter the brain at a cellular level. It can make neurons shrink and disconnect, and cause neuron death, which leads to depression.

Shaking from anger? Your pancreas has been tricked into deregulating your blood sugar levels, and now there is none left. The chemical cocktail released as an answer to the threat can slow down the metabolism, decrease bone density, and suppress the thyroid function.

The problem lies in the fact that all of these can be triggered by only thinking about the thing that makes us angry. Most often than not, we cannot actually do something physically - like punching a person who made us angry. Chronically hostile people can at the very least expect to suffer from frequent colds and flu, infections, and flare-ups. Doesn't that make you angry?