# The ANGRY Heart, and Its Effect on Our Health..Do You Have a Hair-Trigger?



## SeaBreeze (Feb 13, 2015)

Are you a mellow person, or angry and waiting to explode inside?  Is your trigger for negative or aggressive reaction a hair trigger, or does it take awhile for you to blow?  Luckily I'm more laid back, and seem to get mellower with age.  http://energytimes.com/pages/features/0215/angry.html


"You can’t see anything but a red line of brake lights when suddenly a blur whips in from the right—and you hit your brakes to avoid slamming into the interloper’s back end. “Idiot,” you scream, gesturing out the window. Then you mutter, “Probably one of the people from that new development.” Just thinking about all those extra cars jamming the roads can set you ranting to your wife for five minutes (not that she’d ever listen).


It doesn’t get any easier at the office. “Late again?” your boss asks. When you try to explain he cuts you off, saying, “That’s not my problem. Leave earlier.” You turn away but inwardly you’re seething; doesn’t he realize how difficult your commute has become? And when you finally get to your desk you’re greeted with at least three dozen new emails, five of which have attention flags. “What’s wrong with these impatient fools…” 


Everyone has crazy-making days and even normally placid people may respond with the occasional outburst. But others work themselves into an indignant lather over and over again.


At that point anger can morph into hostility, which has three aspects: “Cynical mistrust of other people, increased tendency to get angry at others and an increased tendency to express that anger—yelling, honking the horn,” says Redford Williams, MD, director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, and author (with his wife Virginia) of Anger Kills (Harper Paperbacks). That’s when getting angry is “like taking a dose of some slow-working poison every day of your life.”


“Anger is one of the most stressful emotions we ever experience,” says Howard Martin, executive vice president of HeartMath (*heartmath.com*), a California company that helps people overcome the effects of negative emotions. He says that when anger arises, “we throw our heart rhythms into chaos.” 


That sort of cardiac chaos can be hazardous. “In one study people who were angry as freshmen were, 25 years later, more likely to be overweight and not exercising enough; they also had larger responses in terms of heart rate, stress hormones and blood pressure,” says Williams.

 “In studies people with high hostility levels have platelets that are more likely to clot. All of these physiological changes increase the development of atherosclerosis, particularly in younger age groups.”


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## Debby (Feb 13, 2015)

I think I'm pretty mellow.  I've learned to just accept things for what they are and not take stuff as personally as I did when I was younger.  Far less drama that way and I hate drama.


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## SifuPhil (Feb 13, 2015)

Undirected anger IS a danger, to be sure.

But _controlled_ anger? A gift from the Gods!


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## AZ Jim (Feb 13, 2015)

SifuPhil said:


> Undirected anger IS a danger, to be sure.
> 
> But _controlled_ anger? A gift from the Gods!



Couldn't have said it better, well maybe a little better but you did well enough Phil...


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## DoItMyself (Feb 14, 2015)

I learned a long time ago that anger solves nothing.  If there is a circumstance that is beyond my control, rather than getting angry I simply do the best I can and move on.  If there is a circumstance that is within my power to change, I accept the challenge and work to change it for the better.  Life is far to short to do anything other than embrace it, love it, and live it fully.


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## jujube (Feb 14, 2015)

I know I'm a lot less patient than I used to be.  Of course, every minute I spend standing in line at the grocery store behind the lady trying to redeem 257 expired coupons takes away from my dwindling pool of immortality...


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## tnthomas (Feb 14, 2015)

The Serenity Prayer sums it up:


> Serenity Prayer
> 
> Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
> God grant me the serenity
> ...


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## jujube (Feb 15, 2015)

The Senility Prayer (for those over 65):

God, grant me the senility
To forget the people
I never liked anyway,
The good fortune
To run into the ones I do,
And the eyesight
To tell the difference.


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