Old Yeller… and Screamer

“If you have an angry conversation every now and again or you get upset every now and again, that’s within the normal human experience… When a negative emotion is prolonged, when you’re really having a lot more of it and maybe more intensely, that’s where it’s bad for your health.” 

Antonia Seligowski, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

We live in a nation severely polarized and outrageously angry. Intolerance to the point where ultra-violence is both tolerated and expected. We are well-armed and often legally unleashed to use those arms against those we hate… and there are lots of those. But exactly what is all this anger doing to us… medically speaking? Are we killing ourselves and embracing needless suffering. Sumathi Reddy, writing for the May 22nd Wall Street, Journal takes an anatomical look at what anger really does to us: “Anger is bad for your health in more ways than you think… Getting angry doesn’t just hurt our mental health, it’s also damaging to our hearts, brains and gastrointestinal systems, according to doctors and recent research. Of course, it’s a normal emotion that everyone feels—few of us stay serene when a driver cuts us off or a boss makes us stay late. But getting mad too often or for too long can cause problems…

“One recent study looked at anger’s effects on the heart. It found that anger can raise the risk of heart attacks because it impairs the functioning of blood vessels, according to a May [1st] study in the Journal of the American Heart Association… Researchers examined the impact of three different emotions on the heart: anger, anxiety and sadness. One participant group did a task that made them angry, another did a task that made them anxious, while a third did an exercise designed to induce sadness.

“The scientists then tested the functioning of the blood vessels in each participant, using a blood pressure cuff to squeeze and release the blood flow in the arm. Those in the angry group had worse blood flow than those in the others; their blood vessels didn’t dilate as much… ‘We speculate over time if you’re getting these chronic insults to your arteries because you get angry a lot, that will leave you at risk for having heart disease,’ says Dr. Daichi Shimbo, a professor of medicine at Columbia University and lead author of the study…

“Doctors are also gaining a better understanding of how anger affects your GI system… When someone becomes angry, the body produces numerous proteins and hormones that increase inflammation in the body. Chronic inflammation can raise your risk of many diseases.

“The body’s sympathetic nervous system—or ‘fight or flight’ system—is also activated, which shunts blood away from the gut to major muscles, says Stephen Lupe, director of behavioral medicine at the Cleveland Clinic’s department of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition. This slows down movement in the GI tract, which can lead to problems like constipation… In addition, the space in between cells in the lining of the intestines opens up, which allows more food and waste to go in those gaps, creating more inflammation that can fuel symptoms such as stomach pain, bloating or constipation…

“Anger can harm our cognitive functioning, says Joyce Tam, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. It involves the nerve cells in the prefrontal cortex, the front area of our brain that can affect attention, cognitive control and our ability to regulate emotions... Anger can trigger the body to release stress hormones into the bloodstream. High levels of stress hormones can damage nerve cells in the brain’s prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, says Tam.”

With the election rhetoric ramping up, with polls showing most Americans fear violence during this election cycle and with the nature of the political issues at stake literally creating demands that one side adhere to the strict commands of the other, I suspect political anger will only increase. But as long as political campaigns are literally predicated on extreme “us vs them” and “take a side” platforms, I suspect that the quantum of American anger will only get worse.

I’m Peter Dekom, and you know that our enemies delight at our self-destructive anger; we are literally killing ourselves.