Brief Episodes of Anger May Increase Stroke Risk

A brief episode of anger triggered by a past experience has the potential to increase stroke risk by weakening the ability of blood vessels to relax, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“Impaired vascular function is linked to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke,” said Daichi Shimbo, MD, lead study author and a professor of medicine at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, via a press release. “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.”

To conduct this study, researchers analyzed whether negative emotions—anger, sadness, and anxiety—may have an adverse impact on blood vessel function compared with a neutral emotion. The study consisted of 280 adults who were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 emotional tasks for 8 minutes: 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. Measurements were captured for each participant at baseline (0 minutes) and at 4 different time points (3 minutes, 40 minutes, 70 minutes, and 100 minutes) after experiencing the emotional task.

According to the findings, past events that caused anger led to an impairment in blood vessel dilation from 0 to 40 minutes after the task. The impairment was no longer present after the 40-minute mark. Moreover, the researchers observed statistically significant changes to participants’ blood vessel linings at any time point after experiencing the emotional tasks designed to induce anxiety and sadness.

“We saw that evoking an angered state led to blood vessel dysfunction, though we don’t yet understand what may cause these changes,” Dr. 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.”