Lesson from Life 24 February 2009

"Anger really can kill you

Anger and other strong emotions can trigger potentially deadly heart rhythms. -Tue, Feb 24, 2009 Reuters

CHICAGO - ANGER and other strong emotions can trigger potentially deadly heart rhythms in certain vulnerable people, US researchers said on Monday.


Previous studies have shown that earthquakes, war or even the loss of a World Cup Soccer match can increase rates of death from sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops circulating blood.

'It's definitely been shown in all different ways that when you put a whole population under a stressor that sudden death will increase,' said Dr Rachel Lampert of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, whose study appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 'Our study starts to look at how does this really affect the electrical system of the heart,' Dr Lampert said.


She and colleagues studied 62 patients with heart disease and implantable heart defibrillators or ICDs that can detect dangerous heart rhythms or arrhythmias and deliver an electrical shock to restore a normal heart beat.
Patients in the study took part in an exercise in which they recounted a recent angry episode while Lampert's team did a test called T-Wave Alternans that measures electrical instability in the heart.

Dr Lampert said the team specifically asked questions to get people to relive the angry episode. 'We found in the lab setting that yes, anger did increase this electrical instability in these patients,' she said.


Next, they followed patients for three years to see which patients later had a cardiac arrest and needed a shock from their implantable defibrillator. 'The people who had the highest anger-induced electrical instability were 10 times more likely than everyone else to have an arrhythmia in follow-up,' she said.

Dr Lampert said the study suggests that anger can be deadly, at least for people who are already vulnerable to this type of electrical disturbance in the heart. 'It says yes, anger really does impact the heart's electrical system in very specific ways that can lead to sudden death,' she said.


But she cautioned against extrapolating the results to people with normal hearts. 'How anger and stress may impact people whose hearts are normal is likely very different from how it may impact the heart which has structural abnormalities,' she said. Dr Lampert is now conducting a study to see if anger management classes can help decrease the risk of arrhythmia in this group of at-risk patients.

Sudden cardiac death accounts for more than 400,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the American College of Cardiology."

Some scientific proof that anger is only a 'D' from Danger! This after my long held belief that when you get angry, you worked your heart harder than normal! If this happen often, it cannot be good for your heart!

Lessons for me are:

1. If anger can solve all the problems and challenges I face, I will be glad to do that. However, I know even if I get angry with someone or something, I normally do not solve the problems or challenges. So, the wise must remain calm and collected when faced with the unexpectedly unpleasant situations!;

2. To keep calm and collected, we must look at things from the other person's perspective to understand why he or she behaved as he or she did. We then try to work from that point to help the other person see why there may be a different, and perhaps better, way to solve the issues. It will be a mistake to judge why the other person did not react in the way you would have when faced with similar situation! To do so will only increase your anger and hence hurt your heart!;

3. Maybe it is time to go do that heart check to find out where are hearts are! If it is 'structurally compromised', maybe we can put more efforts to take care no undue pressure or anger flare up! If we know where we need to work on to improve, we can take targeted actions to correct it! Of course, this is subject to us having the commitment to do it as it will require discipline to form a new behavior and turn it into a good habit!

May we learn more about ourselves and how to manage anger and stress to spare our heart from expiring pre-maturely! So that we can lead longer and contribute more!! ;-)