Hostility May Hurt Your Heart
Young adults who scored high on a test of their hostility levels were more than twice as likely to have signs of heart disease 10 years later than those who were rated average or below, a study found.
The study was published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Researchers studied 374 people in 1985, made up of black and white men and women who were 18 to 30 years old. They were give a 50 question hostility test responding to true or false statements.
Ten years later, they underwent a heart scan to measure calcium deposits in the arteries, an indicator of heart disease.
Seventeen percent of those who scored above average on the test showed calcification, compared with 9 percent in the below-average group.
Researchers put the risk at 2.5 times higher for the high-hostility group after adjusting for the other factors.
The study was led by Dr. Carlos Iribarren of the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Oakland, Calif.
He said one reason for the difference could be that hostile people release more stress hormones that raise blood pressure and can lead to heart disease.
Dr. Iribarren said the next step is to find out whether lowering someone's hostility level will stem the progression of heart disease.
Earlier this month, a study published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, found that people who are highly anger-prone are nearly three times more likely to have a heart attack.
That link held true even after risk factors such as smoking and obesity were taken into account.
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