[caption id="attachment_80782" align="aligncenter" width="240"] Angry people risking heart attacks: Study[/caption]Research Suggests Having a Bad Temper Increases a Risk of Heart Attack

A report by the Harvard School of Public Health published in the peer-reviewed periodical called the European Heart Journal suggests that angry people are at a higher risk of a heart attack. Their data suggests that having a single incident of heated anger in a month carries a risk of heart attack in 1 out of every 10,000 persons. This presumes that the person has low cardiovascular activity during the rest of the month. Having just one additional incident per month increases the risk by four-fold to 4 in every 10,000 persons.

Now, people with five daily anger episodes have an even greater risk which is 157 in every 10,000 persons. This again presumes low cardiovascular activity. In people with high cardiovascular activity, which is concomitant with high stress, the risk becomes 657 in every 10,000 persons.

Where the research gets cloudy is in regards to the question of why there is a link between anger and heart attacks. The report says there is little risk of a single angry outburst causing a heart attack. They are talking about the cumulative effect of angry behavior over a period of time. It may be that people with angry tempers rely upon alcohol or tobacco to relax and those substances increase their risk of heart attack.

Source:
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-26416153