When you think of physical health, you imagine exercise, diet, genetics, and illnesses. All of these have a direct effect on your physical health, but did you know that your emotions can influence your body's health? Stress and anger trigger a physiological response, and while in short short-term activation of the stress response can be adaptive, it only works under specific conditions. In children, it can even lead to anxiety in adulthood, decreased heart health, as well as a plethora of other consequences. Unchecked anger is a danger to your health, and this article intends to dive into the connection between anger and health, both direct and indirect. By understanding these intricacies, you'll learn to better manage anger, allowing you to live a happier and healthier life.

The Body's Immediate Response to Anger

When something makes you angry, it triggers a cascade of physiological changes through the fight-or-flight response. This response was honed over several millennia of human evolution, helping our ancestors survive treacherous situations by giving them the strength to fight through it, or the energy to run and survive. Even though we've been living in far safer times for the past century, this response is still activated in times of stress, anxiety, and anger.

The fight or flight mechanism is meant to be a short-term response. When you become angered, stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline are released. These hormones influence every aspect of your physiology, altering your body's dynamic processes to survive a dangerous scenario. Anger can both trigger the fight or flight response, as well as be the result of your body choosing to fight in what it deems to be a fight or flight scenario. Your sympathetic nervous system takes charge, leading to the production and release of the stress hormones.

The Role of Adrenaline

When you're angered, you'll want to take protective measures both consciously and unconsciously. Adrenaline helps you achieve a lot of those unconscious measures. Thanks to adrenaline, the following will happen in your body:

• Heart rate increases and blood pressure rises
• Rate of breathing increases
• Flushed face as increased blood flow enters your limbs and extremities in preparation for physical action
• Your attention focuses on the target of your anger (tunnel vision)

With anger or rage, your body gets ready to fight. Your muscles get tensed up, sometimes even trembling from the adrenaline rush. You'll be stronger than you normally are thanks to it.

The Impact of Chronic Anger on Physical Health

Anger is unavoidable in the short term, and it isn't necessarily unhealthy. It's an important emotion which can often give you the energy to do what needs to be done. That said, chronic anger can have significant and lasting consequences on your physical health. The constant generation of stress hormones and the results of the effect these hormones have over the long term can increase your risk for a vast variety of health issues:

Cardiovascular Health

We've discussed how anger results in the increased production of stress hormones known as catecholamines. These hormones increase blood pressure and play a role in the development of artery clogging plaque. In the short term, these changes are meant to help your muscles function better and to stem blood loss. However, when someone suffers from chronic stress and anger, these physiological changes can negatively impact them in the following ways:

• Hypertension: Research has shown that not having healthy outlets for anger can cause an increase in hypertension. Though this is temporary, chronic anger can cause elevated blood pressure in the long term, and this will contribute to the deterioration of cardiovascular health. The elevated blood pressure is caused by the release of adrenaline and cortisol, which causes your blood vessels to constrict.
• Atherosclerosis: Having a disposition to anger, the tendency to experience anger on minimal provocation, and the propensity to express anger outwardly are associated with heightened atherosclerosis. Short bursts of anger may temporarily damage the ability of blood vessels to properly dilate, which is pivotal in preventing arteries from hardening.
• Stroke: Anger or emotional upset was linked to an approximately 30% higher risk of having a stroke within one hour of experiencing these emotions. Constant anger in a person can lead to a high level of physiological activation, particularly sympathetic activation. This can lead to endothelial damage, increased vascular rigidity, and elevated blood pressure. Anger may result in increased cortisol release along with activation of the hypothalamo-hypophyseal axis, which can result in the disruption of vulnerable plaques. Anger can also result in increased inflammatory and pro-thrombotic responses, causing increased platelet aggregation and plasma viscosity and decreased fibrinolytic potential. All of these factors can cause an increased risk of stroke.
• Coronary Heart Disease: The increased production of catecholamines due to anger can increase blood pressure, subsequently playing a role in the development of artery-clogging plaque. Over the course of many years, this can lead to coronary artery disease.

Acute anger can also cause significant cardiac issues. The sudden surge of catecholamines during fits of anger can cause heart attacks, lethal heart rhythms, and rapid weakening of the heart muscle, known as stress cardiomyopathy. This is also known as broken heart syndrome, which primarily occurs in women.

Immune System Impact

Your immune system can be influenced by your social environment as well as your physical environment. Research has shown that chronic anger can weaken your immune system's ability to protect you from illnesses, primarily through the long-term release of stress hormones and the disruption of key immune functions. Chronic anger and stress can cause increased inflammation, suppression of immune cells, disruption of cytokine production, and reduced antibody production.

Gastrointestinal System Health

The gut and brain are connected through the gut-brain axis. This is why when you feel angry, stressed, or even sad, it can feel "gut-wrenching". Your gastrointestinal tract is sensitive to your emotions, and chronic anger can often contribute to pathophysiological effects on your digestive tract:

• Irritable Bowel Syndrome: Studies show that people suffering from IBS are more prone to anger. The mechanism by which anger influences gut motility is yet to be clarified, but imaging studies have reported that IBS patients showed activation in the brain regions with a role in endogenous pain modulation. It has been suggested that symptoms related to anger may activate pain facilitating mechanisms and compromise pain inhibitory mechanisms. These studies suggest that a predisposition to anger may contribute to the development and evolution of IBS, possibly through modulation of colonic motor activity.
• Peptic Ulcers: When angered, acid production is increased in the gut, essential nutrients that keep the stomach and intestinal lining healthy are restricted, and the gut microbiome alters. Alterations in the gut microbiome can affect the immune system and gut health, and the H. pylori bacteria that are already present in the gut can cause peptic ulcers due to the impacted immune system. Furthermore, depleting gut microbiota can possibly increase aggression and decrease brain serotonin and tryptophan levels.
• General digestive issues: When the stress response is triggered by anger, muscles involved in digestion go into "fight or flight" mode. They can react by rapidly pushing waste through the digestive system, causing nausea, cramping, bloating, and diarrhea.

Anger and its Effect on the Nervous System

Your nervous system controls every aspect of your body whether it's voluntary or involuntary. As such, stress and anger can have a profound effect on your nervous system both in the short and long term.

Your autonomic nervous system is a part of the peripheral nervous system. It regulates lots of involuntary body processes, such as heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal. The autonomic nervous system consists of two primary branches. Let's take a look at what these three divisions are, and how anger affects them:

• Sympathetic nervous system: This system is activated during anger leading to a raised heart rate, increased muscle tension, and sometimes the sensation of feeling hot. Frequent anger can lead to excessive liberation of corticosteroids and catecholamine. This can lead to hemodynamic and metabolic modifications, vascular problems, and disorders of the cardiac rhythm.
• Parasympathetic nervous system: This system is responsible for your body's rest and digestion when you're relaxed, resting, or feeding. Anger results in parasympathetic withdrawal, which is the decrease of the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system. That means the sympathetic system will work unrestricted, leading to higher heart rates, blood pressure, digestive issues, increased anxiety, impaired immune function and sleep disturbances. Recent research has also shown that parasympathetic withdrawal is an integral component of the autonomic imbalance characteristic of congestive heart failure.

Enteric nervous system is the third component of the nervous system, usually grouped with the parasympathetic branch. It controls gastrointestinal behavior independent of the central nervous system. That parasympathetic system enhances digestion, whereas the sympathetic system inhibits it. Anger and stress in early life can cause alterations in the secretomotor and visceral pain functions. Frequent anger can also increase the risk of developing inflammatory bowel diseases, as well as increasing the risk of flare-ups.

It's worth noting that anger proneness leads to the overactivity of the sympathetic nervous system. This can lead to the following issues:

• The parasympathetic nervous system's ability to return the body to a relaxed state is impaired, meaning the body stays at heightened alert for longer.
• Exhaustion of adrenal glands due to overstimulation.
• Inflammation due to heightened levels of stress hormones, caused by the impaired parasympathetic nervous system.

Chronic Stress and Its Relation to Anger-Induced Physical Problems

Chronic stress is often linked to anger, and they can cause long-lasting pathophysiological effects. A constantly active stress response leads to an overactive sympathetic nervous system, which can then lead to the following:

• Increased inflammation: Chronic stress is associated with elevated inflammation levels, which is linked to issues like arthritis, diabetes, and heart diseases.
• Hormonal imbalances: Chronic stress and anger can cause disruption in the production and regulation of cortisol, sex hormones, and thyroid hormones. This can cause weight gain, decreased libido, mood swings, and fatigue.
• Sleep disturbances: The sympathetic nervous system's constant activity reduces the parasympathetic system's ability to relax your body, which will then lead to sleep disturbances such as insomnia.

The Psychological and Physical Toll of Suppressed Anger

Anger is often seen as a negative emotion, so naturally most people try not to express it in public. The last thing you want is to be considered a loose cannon in the workplace. However, suppressing your anger can have detrimental effects on your physical and mental health.

Physical Effects

While most people consider anger to be just an emotion, it has physical manifestations both through expressing it and bottling it up. Here's what might happen through repressing it:

• Tension headaches: People who suppress anger are more prone to tension headaches and migraines.
• Muscle pain: Suppressed anger can manifest as muscle tension. Those who suppress anger tend to experience worse lower back pain than those who don't.
• Fatigue: Those who suppress anger regularly tend to feel more tired than those who experience chronic fatigue. This may be due to the highly emotional and mentally draining nature of anger suppression.

Psychological Effects

Aside from the physical effects of suppressed anger, it can cause both behavioral changes as well as emotional changes. Some of the emotional changes are as follows:

• Resentment towards others: Suppressing your anger can lead to resentment, which manifests as bitterness, betrayal, or disappointment.
• Constant irritability: People who constantly suppress their anger become prone to irritability characterized by quick, angry outbursts of frustration and annoyance. Such irritability might also outwardly appear to have no apparent trigger or cause.
• Persistent low mood: Those who suppress anger may seem to experience mood problems like depression. This can seem like sadness, a lack of motivation, or becoming tearful without a clear reason.
• Anxiety: Repressing anger can lead to a constant state of anxiety. This happens due to the lack of an outlet for your anger. It manifests as racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating, sweating, trembling, and rapid heartbeat.

Some of the behavioral changes caused by suppressing anger are:

• Passive-aggressive tendencies: It's an indirect way to express anger, causing the person suffering from suppressed anger to speak sarcastically, give silent treatment, or deliver subtle insults.
• Withdrawal: Many who struggle with anger have feelings of guilt, fear of loss of control, and feelings of being overwhelmed. This leads them to cope with repressed anger by spending more time alone, and it may look like emotional detachment or come across as "numbness" or "flatness".
• Conflict avoidance: Those who regularly suppress anger may choose to avoid conflict out of fear of abandonment or rejection.

Anger and Mental Health: A Two-Way Street

Anger has direct ties to your mental health. Your mental health affects how you express anger, and the way you express anger can also affect your mental health. It's a reciprocal relationship, meaning they influence and exacerbate each other.

Poorly managed anger and even chronic anger can lead to the development or worsening of mental health disorders. Here are a few of the major mental health conditions that can influence anger, or be influenced by it:

• Depression: People with depressive illness often have symptoms of overt or suppressed anger. This can manifest as excessive irritability, frequent anger outbursts, physical and verbal abuse, and acts of deliberate self-harm. This later leads to a deep sense of guilt and can disturb that person's interpersonal relationships, which can worsen depression.
• Anxiety Disorders: Anger and aggression may often serve as a means to avoid feared stimuli. An anxious individual may express extreme or out-of-proportion anger in order to disengage with the stimulus. Individuals with anxiety may also have difficulty expressing negative emotional states, which can lead to heightened physiological arousal that can result in intense anger and aggression. In a similar vein, children who are aggressive or angry may be at higher risk of developing anxiety disorders, due to the potential isolation from peers due to aggressive behavior, physiological hyperarousal, fear of losing control of their anger, and other pathways. Anxiety also leads to irritability and anger caused by the individual feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope with their fears and worries. Chronic anger can further fuel anxiety by creating a constant state of tension and hypervigilance.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Individuals with PTSD and Complex PTSD can have extreme emotional reactions to things that observers believe are minor situations or easily explained sensory stimuli. A theory as to why increased anger occurs in PTSD is that trauma changes how the brain recognizes potential threats. This means a heightened sense of anger due to their emotional rawness and hypervigilance. This anger may be expressed outwardly through hostility or aggression, or be internalized anger in the form of self-harming, suicidality, and self hatred. Both can be a source of significant distress.
• Borderline Personality Disorder: Emotions often feel amplified in people dealing with borderline personality disorder. Anger in particular can be intense, difficult to control, and often inappropriate for the situation. This can lead to damaged relationships and further destabilize mood, worsening BPD.

Uncontrolled anger can further exacerbate mental health conditions in the following ways:

• Impaired functioning: Anger issues can interfere with a person's ability to carry out daily life tasks, maintain relationships, and ability to engage in self care tasks.
• Increased risk of relapse: For a person recovering from mental health disorders, anger issues can trigger a relapse.
• Increased symptoms: Outbursts of anger, irritability, and suppressed anger can often intensify the core symptoms of mental health disorders.
• Reduced treatment effectiveness: If a person undergoing therapy and medication for mental health issues is suffering from unresolved anger issues, it can reignite and intensify symptoms.

Managing Anger to Improve Physical Health

If you struggle with chronic anger, it doesn't have to go unchecked. While anger is a powerful emotion, there are effective ways to manage anger, reduce the impact it has on your body and well being, and even ways to channel it into productive outlets. The most important thing is to be proactive when you understand that anger is becoming a problem for you.

Effective Anger Management Strategies

Some of the best ways to manage anger is through a combination of retroactive and proactive methods:

• Mindfulness: This is the practice of embedding yourself in the present moment by paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations without any judgment. Through practicing mindfulness, one can become more aware of their anger triggers, recognize early warning signs of anger outbursts, and learn to create a space between their emotions and actions. Mindfulness can be practiced in breathing, walking, working, meditation, and virtually every facet of life. The core of it is that whatever you're doing, focus on the action, how it makes you feel, and ground yourself in the present moment. Mindfulness training has been shown to reduce anger, hostility, and aggression both physically and verbally through reductions in anger rumination.
• Relaxation Techniques: These techniques can be a great way to start and end your day, having noticeable effect on reducing the stress and anger you feel over time. They also work great at calming yourself down if you already feel angry. Techniques such as deep breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, guided imagery, meditation, and breath focus can help calm your nervous system and reduce physical symptoms of anger. The simple act of taking a deep breath, flexing and relaxing muscles, or imagining a peaceful scenery might sound silly, but it goes a long way in managing anger.
• Cognitive Reframing: One of the most effective forms of therapy for those struggling with their mental well being is cognitive behavioral therapy. It centers around challenging and changing negative thought patterns. For a person dealing with anger issues, learning to challenge the negative thoughts that provoke anger, identifying irrational beliefs, and developing more balanced and realistic perspectives can go a long way. The basic methodology is as follows: Question whether your negative thoughts are valid or not based on the evidence available. Then, try to look at your situation from a different perspective to see if you can find a positive or constructive viewpoint. Finally, understand that not everything is under your control, so focus your energy only on the areas that you can influence.

The Role of Regular Physical Exercise in Anger Management

Having a healthy outlet through which you can express your anger is one of the best ways to manage it. Anger triggers stress hormone production, and using that burst of energy and rage to accomplish physical goals can have a twofold effect: It dissipates the anger you're feeling, and exercise helps release endorphins which have a mood-boosting effect, leading to reduced feelings of anger, anxiety, and depression. Regularly engaging in physical exercise will have the following benefits:

• Improved sleep quality: Regular physical activity can lead to improved sleep quality and reduced sleep latency. It can also help manage sleep disorders like insomnia.
• Improved libido and sexual satisfaction: Scientific articles have found that acute exercise improves physiological sexual arousal, driven by increases in the sympathetic nervous system activity and endocrine factors. Chronic exercise enhances sexual satisfaction indirectly by preserving autonomic flexibility, which benefits cardiovascular health and mood. An improved, positive body image due to chronic exercise also increases sexual well-being. Regular exercise can even contribute to decreasing erectile problems in men with erectile dysfunction caused by physical inactivity, obesity, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, and/or cardiovascular disease.
• Reduced muscle tension: Anger can often cause your muscles to become tense, and exercising helps release this tension.
• Relieves stress hormone buildup: Exercise is a great way to defuse stress and anger, especially if you exercise right after the stress response was triggered. It helps you burn off stress hormones and elicits the relaxation response from your parasympathetic nervous system.

Benefits of Anger Management for Physical Health

Managing your anger does more than just take care of your mental health. Your physical health is massively impacted by your anger, and by being in control of this emotion, you'll be able to reduce your risk of developing serious health problems. Let's explore some of the key aspects of your physical health that'll see improvement through anger management:

Improved Cardiovascular Health Through Emotional Control

Chronic anger, and even acute anger, can have significant impact on your cardiovascular health. It has been proven that anger can lead to atherosclerosis, higher blood pressure, inflammation, and even broken heart syndrome. By managing your anger, you'll be lowering your risk of heart attacks, angina, heart failure, and even stroke.

Improved Immune Function

Anger triggers the release of cortisol which can suppress immune function. Chronic anger results in elevated cortisol levels, which causes increased inflammation and a weakened immune response. By managing your anger, you'll have increased resilience towards common infections like colds and flu, have improved wound healing, and potentially reduce the severity and frequency of symptoms associated with autoimmune diseases and other chronic conditions.

Enhanced Mental Well Being and Clarity

Anger can lead to violent behavior, and it can impact your mental clarity and well being. Managing your anger will help you improve your focus and concentration, increase energy levels, and result in more stable emotions as well as an improved sense of well being.

Practical Tips for Managing Anger in Healthy Ways

Anger can be healthily managed or even expressed through numerous ways. Let's take a look at a few methods that can help you deescalate anger, reduce your likelihood to anger, and improve your overall wellbeing.

Mindfulness and Breathing Exercises

Deep breathing and mindfulness can have a calming effect, as it counteracts the "fight or flight" response with the relaxation response. The following techniques have been proved to provide relief in moments of anger and stress:

• Physiological Sigh: Inhale through the nose to the full capacity of your lungs, and once you've reached the peak of inspiration, do one more quick inhale through the nose to further pop open the air sacks in your lungs. Then, slowly exhale through the mouth. Doing this one to three times can bring about a noticeable reduction in the stress and anger you feel.
• Diaphragmatic Breathing: Sit up straight with one hand on your chest and the other on your belly. Inhale slowly through your nose, allowing your belly to expand while keeping your chest stationary. Exhale slowly through your mouth, bringing your abdomen back to its resting position. Repeating this technique a few times will help you slow your heartbeat and even stabilize blood pressure.
• Mindfulness Incorporation: Grounding yourself to reality by observing your thoughts and feelings without judgement is a good way to acknowledge your anger without getting swept away by it. Try to take in as many of the physical sensations as possible, and then gently relax bit by bit.

Physical Outlets for Anger

Engaging in physical activity is one of the most effective ways to dissipate anger immediately. Different kinds of physical activities can help you release your pent-up anger, reduce the level of stress hormones, and boost your mood through endorphin production. Here are some of the most highly recommended physical outlets:

• Aerobic exercises: Running, swimming, and cycling can help reduce anger expression, and even reduce the likelihood of violence in anger-prone individuals.
• Strength training: Channeling your anger to lift heavy weights is a practice as old as time itself. You may be familiar with people who, when angry, punch walls or doors. Strength training is a far more productive outlet for anger that gives you a sense of empowerment and control, improves your physique, increases libido, and feels therapeutic.
• Yoga: Yoga balances physical exercise with mental tranquility. It promotes the relaxation response, calming your nervous system.

When to Seek Professional Help

Sometimes, no amount of self care and self help can help effectively tackle the anger issues you face. That isn't the end of the world, it just means it's time to seek out help from a therapist or a counsellor. Through evidence-based practices, they'll help you understand what the underlying cause for your anger is, help you manage your anger in healthy and constructive ways, help you learn how to express your feelings and needs without resorting to anger, and help you address and trauma that may contribute to your anger or affect the way you express it.

Conclusion

Through this in-depth analysis of anger and how its effects on your physical health, it's impossible to deny the importance of anger management. This single emotion has a profound effect on mental health conditions, physical illnesses, and even basic physiological functions like digestion! Aggressive behavior is detrimental to the relationships you have with the people around you, but now you even have irrefutable evidence that being angry will negatively impact yourself intrinsically.

This is why Liven believes that it is vital to find healthy physical outlets for anger, whether it's through therapy, breathing exercises, physical activity, or mindfulness. With baby steps, you'll learn to manage all the signs of anger to the point where it becomes a thing of the past, and your body and mind will thank you for it.

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