5 Ways Anger Affects Your Health
Feeling intense and frequent anger (especially when it outsizes the trigger) can have consequences on your physical and mental well-being.
Anger is not only an uncomfortable feeling, but spending too long being angry can have ill effects on your health.
When anger experiences are too frequent, too intense, last too long, or are out of proportion to the triggering event, the emotion can have problematic effects on our well-being and our health, according to Raymond Chip Tafrate, PhD, a clinical psychologist and professor at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.
“Anger is part of the fight, freeze, or flight response in which the adrenal glands flood the body with stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol,” explains Dr. Tafrate.
RELATED: How Stress Affects the Body
While this stress response system in our body has evolved to protect us, in most cases, we don’t need that extra energy boost to deal with whatever is causing our anger (unexpected traffic, a child acting up, or a terse email from a coworker).
And chronic activation of stress hormones leads to serious physical and mental illnesses. Here are some health effects of anger to know about:
1. Anger Stresses Out the Heart
Anger also impacts people with arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats), according to Rachel Lampert, MD, the director of the Sports Cardiology Program at Yale Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.
2. Anger Increases Risk of Heart Attacks
Evidence also suggests that anger is specifically linked to higher risk of heart attacks.
RELATED: What Are the Symptoms of a Heart Attack?
3. Anger Can Disrupt Digestion
But that can be disturbed when the body goes into fight-or-flight mode, as can happen in response to stress.
RELATED: Signs of an Unhealthy Gut — and What You Can Do About It
4. Too Much Anger Hinders Mental Health
“Our anger reactions can cause harm to our most important relationships,” Tafrate said. Humans are social creatures, and we need social connections to thrive. “Anger can set the stage for nasty verbal rants or even violent behavior.”
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5. Anger Can Mess With Your Sleep
Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking
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Sources
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- Control Anger Before It Controls You. American Psychological Association. November 3, 2023.
- Rosenberg EL et al. Linkages Between Facial Expressions of Anger and Transient Myocardial Ischemia in Men With Coronary Artery Disease. Emotion. June 2001.
- Veenstra L et al. The Facts on the Furious: A Brief Review of the Psychology of Trait Anger. Current Opinion in Psychology. February 2018.
- Williams JE, et al. Anger Proneness Predicts Coronary Heart Disease Risk. Circulation. May 2, 2000.
- Lampert R. Anger and Ventricular Arrhythmias. Current Opinion in Cardiology. January 2010.
- Mostofsky E et al. Outbursts of Anger as a Trigger of Acute Cardiovascular Events: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. European Heart Journal. June 2014.
- Clapp M et al. Gut Microbiota’s Effect on Mental Health: The Gut-Brain Axis. Clinics and Practice. September 15, 2017.
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- Shin C et al. Relationship Between Trait-Anger and Sleep Disturbances in Middle-Aged Men and Women. Journal of Psychosomatic Research. February 2005.
- Hisler G et al. Anger Tendencies and Sleep: Poor Anger Control Is Associated With Objectively Measured Sleep Disruption. Journal of Research in Personality. December 2017.