When your friend doesn’t save a seat for you in the metro or eats the last pizza piece without offering it to you, it’s normal to get a little angry or pissed off about it.
And when the friend doesn’t do her job and put your name instead for not doing it, it would seem okay to get really angry at them. You vent it out and go back to normal again.
But what gets missed in the picture is what happened inside you when you had the sudden burst of anger. Physically, you get an adrenaline rush as blood rushes to your brain muscles. But is this harmful in any way?
Well, there are more than enough reasons saying that anger is indeed extremely harmful for your health.
1. Anger is your heart’s biggest enemy
People who experience an anger outburst have double the risk of getting a heart attack, according to research performed at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Suppressing anger is not good enough though, since the mental tension and toxic chemicals produced in your lead will still affect your cardiac health. Additionally, angry people are also at an increased risk of getting a stroke due to rupture of brain’s arteries.
2. It’s bad for your immune functioning
People who get angry often also get sick often, according to research at Harvard Medical School. Sudden and continuous bursts of anger are difficult for your body to deal with and often suppressing the working of our immune system for more than six hours after the venting.
3. It makes you anxious and even depressed
Stress not only hampers your decision making ability but also increases your risk of getting coronary heart diseases. And anger leads to stress (voila!), anxiety and even depression according to studies published in Cognitive Behavior Therapy.
4. It’s a roadblock in your productivity and creativity
Not just your heart, immune system and lungs, anger is detrimental for your mental health also. This is because negative and toxic emotions like anger make you lose focus and prevent you from concentrating on the rational logic. Thus it’s easier for angry people to also fall into bad habits like drugs, alcoholism and smoking.
