{"id":1024568,"date":"2024-05-01T21:51:27","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T04:51:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/?p=1024568"},"modified":"2026-09-01T08:13:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T15:13:39","slug":"dont-go-ballistic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaegisalliance.com\/es\/2024\/05\/01\/no-ir-balistico\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight Minutes of Recalled Anger Cut Blood Vessel Dilation in Half, Columbia Researchers Find \u2014 Sadness and Anxiety Did Not"},"content":{"rendered":"

An eight-minute memory is enough to injure the lining of your arteries. That is not a metaphor. It is the result of a randomized trial Columbia cardiologists published in the Journal of the American Heart Association<\/em> on May 1, 2024. Recalling a personal insult cut the blood vessels’ ability to widen by more than half. Recalling anxiety did not. Reading sad sentences did not. Counting to 100 did not. Anger was the only negative emotion in the room that left a vascular fingerprint.<\/p>\n

Dr. Daichi Shimbo, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, ran the study on an NIH grant to answer a question older papers had only circled. Observational work has tied angry outbursts to heart attacks for decades. A 1994 study found anger could double risk in some people. Nobody had isolated the plumbing. \u00abWe’ve long suspected, based on observational studies, that anger can negatively affect the heart,\u00bb said Laurie Friedman Donze, the NHLBI program officer. \u00abThis study in healthy adults helps fill a real knowledge gap and shows how this might occur.\u00bb<\/p>\n

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The lab task was eight minutes of recalled anger, not a cartoon blow-up. The arteries still took the hit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

280 People, Four Scripts, One Damaged Lining<\/h2>\n

Researchers recruited 280 adults from the neighborhoods around Columbia, ages 18 to 73, average about 26, none of them carrying diagnosed cardiovascular disease or the usual risk-factor pile. Each person sat for 30 minutes in a quiet, temperature-controlled room \u2014 no talking, no phone, no reading, no sleep. Then they were randomized into one of four eight-minute tasks: relive a memory that made them angry, relive one that made them anxious, read a stack of depressing sentences, or count to 100 and stay flat.<\/p>\n

Before the task and at intervals after it, the team measured blood pressure, heart rate, and how well the vessels in the forearm and fingers could dilate. They drew blood to look at endothelial-cell injury and at bone-marrow-derived cells that repair the lining.<\/p>\n

The anger group lost more than half their dilation capacity. The drop showed up almost immediately, peaked around 40 minutes, and then faded. Anxiety and sadness produced no statistically significant change \u2014 a split that surprised the investigators. The endothelium is the inner skin of a blood vessel. When it cannot relax, blood flow suffers, and that failure is treated as an early step toward atherosclerosis, the hardening that sits under most heart attacks and strokes. \u00abAnger is bad for your blood vessel function,\u00bb Shimbo said. \u00abIt impairs the function of your arteries, which is linked to future heart attack risk.\u00bb<\/p>\n

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