Research finds anger can have negative impact on blood vessels

BOSTON - A new study finds that negative emotion can impact the health of your blood vessels.

Researchers at Columbia University took 280 healthy adults and randomly assigned them to recall feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety, or remain neutral for eight minutes. They found that anger, not sadness or anxiety, reduced the ability of the participants' blood vessels to dilate or open up. In other words, it made them stiffer which over time could lead to heart attack, stroke, or kidney disease.

The effects only lasted up to 40 minutes but if you're someone who angers easily and frequently, you could be doing lasting harm to your arteries. Scientists would also like to study whether anger management could help improve patients' cardiovascular risk.

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Mallika Marshall, MD

Mallika Marshall, MD is an Emmy-award-winning journalist and physician who has served as the HealthWatch Reporter for CBS Boston/WBZ-TV for over 20 years. A practicing physician Board Certified in both Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, Dr. Marshall serves on staff at Harvard Medical School and practices at Massachusetts General Hospital at the MGH Chelsea Urgent Care and the MGH Revere Health Center, where she is currently working on the frontlines caring for patients with COVID-19. She is also a host and contributing editor for Harvard Health Publications (HHP), the publishing division of Harvard Medical School.

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