Full Blog:
Quick, when was the last time you flipped your lid and blew your top? Ill bet its still a pretty vivid memory. Well, the next time you feel like blowing it, consider this. Your anger can literally kill you. And it does it by increasing abnormal heart beats (arrhythmias) and sudden heart attacks, or cardiac arrest. Hey, pay attention, because those two medical condition lead to over 400,000 death per year.
Youve probably read other stories about how sudden cardiac deaths occur in times of great population stress such as wars and earthquakes. Heres something I bet you didnt know. New research has found that there are anger-induced electrical changes that occur in the heart, and these altered currents can actually predict future arrhythmias in people who already have implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICD). This means these people already had heart disease of some kind and structural damage to the heart.
Scientists studied men and women who had an ICD by administering a mental stress test, which entailed conjuring up a memory of a recent life situation where they were angry or very frustrated. Special instruments monitored the hearts electrical stability. Its interesting to know that mental stress doesnt increase your heart rate, the way that physical stress can. So, heart rate is not the culprit, but most probably adrenalin is acting directly on the heart muscle cells. Then, these people were followed for almost 40 months to see if they had any arrhythmias that would trip the ICD into action to correct the abnormal rhythm. Wipe the shock off your face when I tell you that those people who had the highest levels of anger-induced electrical waves, were the most likely to have potentially life threatening arrhythmias. These people had a risk of up to ten times that of people who didnt get so bent out of shape over lifes stresses.
By now, you know where Im going to go with this one. Outside of a true life threatening emergency where your fight and flight response may save a life, anger is a critical waste of what I call your body dollars. Spend yourself wisely. When you feel like popping a cork, take a deep breath instead. Visualize an imaginary red STOP sign in front of you. Respond instead of reacting. No knee jerk verbal bullets shot across the room. If you lose your temper, youre the loser. Stop the escalation of the hot dialogue and instead calmly say if we cant peacefully discuss this issue, perhaps we need to take a break and come back to it. Folks, its just not worth the mental anguish. Take time to learn how to control this powerful emotion. Spend your time mending, not breaking, hearts.
|
