If you want to get worked up, do it for just two or three minutes (and that might be too much)

Even brief periods of provoked anger can have a negative impact on our blood vessels’ ability to relax, a new study finds, which could have implications for how we view the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Several previous observational studies have linked negative emotions, such as anger, to an increased risk of heart attacks.

A new study, led by the American Heart Association, has now sought to determine more precisely how an experience of anger actually affects our blood vessels and the cells that line them.

To this end, a team of researchers recruited 280 healthy adults with an average age of 26 to participate in a study, in which they were asked to sit in silence and relax for 30 minutes before moving on to the next phase.

Afterwards, the researchers measured the blood pressure, heart rate and dilation of blood vessels, and collected blood samples from the participants. The participants were then assigned an emotional task based on your position in one of four randomly assigned groups.

One group was asked to recall a memory that made them angrythe second group was asked to recall a anxiety memory; the third group read ua set of depressing phrases to evoke sadness; and the fourth group was limited to count from zero to 100 repeatedly to create an emotionally neutral state.

All individuals participated in the task assigned to them for eight minutes. After completing the tasks, the same measurements from the beginning of the study were carried out again after three minutes, 40 minutes, 70 minutes and 100 minutes.

The researchers found that in participants who experienced the rage-inducing memoriesthe cells in your blood vessels have been altered in such a way that dilation was impaired for up to 40 minutes after the activity. In other words, blood vessels could not relax.

A study published in 2023 in Circulation Research related this problem to the development of atherosclerosisa disease that blocks the arteries and can increase the risk of stroke and heart disease.

The results of the new study were presented in an article published this Wednesday in Journal of the American Heart Association.

“We saw that the evocation of a state of anger led to blood vessel dysfunction, although we still don’t understand what might cause these changes,” said the study’s lead author, Daichi Shimboprofessor of medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York.

“Researching the underlying links between anger and blood vessel dysfunction could help identify effective intervention targets for people at increased risk of cardiovascular events,” adds the researcher, cited by New Scientist.

Interestingly, researchers did not find any negative impact on blood vessel function in study participants who performed the blood pressure-inducing tasks. anxiety or sadness.

This is not to say that these emotions do not have a negative impact on heart health; however, this particular study did not reveal a physical change associated with these emotions.

The authors of the study emphasize that the group analyzed consisted of individuals quite young and healthyso it’s unclear whether the results would translate to an older group who might be taking medication for heart problems.

The study was also carried out in the relatively peaceful environment in a laboratory, so it remains to be seen how our blood vessels react in real world situations — which, naturally, would be much more difficult to study.

Still, the team considers that the data obtained during their study is quite significant.

“This study adds to the growing evidence base that mental well-being can affect cardiovascular health and that intense acute emotional states, such as anger or stress can lead to cardiovascular events“, says Glenn Levine, scientific officer at the American Heart Association.

“The study’s findings show very eloquently how anger can have a negative impact on the health and function of the vascular endotheliumr, and we know that the vascular endothelium, the lining of blood vessels, is a key element in myocardial ischemia and atherosclerotic heart disease”, concludes the researcher.