A brief episode of anger triggered by remembering past experiences may adversely affect the blood vessels’ ability to relax, which is essential for proper blood flow, according to new research published May 1 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open-access, peer-reviewed publication.
Previous research has found that impairment of blood vessels’ ability to relax may increase the risk of developing atherosclerosis, which may, in turn, increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
“Impaired vascular function is linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” said lead study author Daichi Shimbo, M.D., a professor of medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. “Observational studies have linked feelings of negative emotions with having a heart attack or other cardiovascular disease events. The most common negative emotion studied is anger, and there are fewer studies on anxiety and sadness, which have also been linked to heart attack risk.”
In this study, the researchers investigated whether such emotions may raise alarm bells on blood vessel function compared to a neutral emotion. The 280 young, healthy adults in the study, chosen from the area around the medical center and a variety of racial and ethnic groups, were randomly assigned to one of four emotional tasks for eight minutes, including recalling a personal memory that made them angry; recalling a personal memory of anxiety; reading a series of depressing sentences that evoked sadness; or repeatedly counting to 100 to induce an emotionally neutral state. This protocol, “Putative mechanisms Underlying Myocardial infarction onset and Emotions (PUME),” was described by the researchers in a previous paper.
Researchers assessed the lining of the cells in each study participant’s blood vessels before the tasks and at several points after, looking for evidence of impaired blood vessel dilation, increased cell injury and/or reduced cell repair capacity. The measurements taken before the emotional tasks were repeated after the tasks were completed.
Measurements were taken for each participant at baseline (zero minutes) and at four different points after experiencing the assigned emotional task – three minutes, 40 minutes, 70 minutes and 100 minutes. The analysis found:
- Tasks that recalled past events causing anger led to an impairment in blood vessel dilation, from zero to 40 minutes after the task. The impairment was no longer present after the 40-minute mark.
- There were no statistically significant changes to participants’ blood vessel linings at any points after experiencing the anxiety and sadness emotional tasks.
“We saw that evoking an angered state led to blood vessel dysfunction, though we don’t yet understand what may cause these changes,” Shimbo said. “Investigation into the underlying links between anger and blood vessel dysfunction may help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular events.”
