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American Morning
Manage Anger Properly or Risk Heart Disease
Aired May 29, 2002 - 08:44 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: If you're one of those guys or gals that has a short fuse, listen up, anger can shorten your life. That's what a couple of long-term studies on heart disease say, at least.
And CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta is here with me to talk about how all of this works -- good morning.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. And I don't know if I told you, I'm from a town of 4,000, so there's a lot of angry people here in New York compared to where I come from. And that is a subject of...
ZAHN: Oh, ouch. Oh, it's -- now you gave me a wide-open berth here because this is my city.
GUPTA: Yes, well I'll give you a -- I'll give you a chance here. But let me tell you about this study.
A study out of Johns Hopkins, and they found that three times as likely to have heart disease if you do not -- if you do not manage your anger properly; and five times likely if you actually show your anger as compared to someone who conceals it. So considerable -- there's always -- you know, I guess it's always been sort of out there that people who get angry are more likely to have heart disease. These studies actually confirm some of the numbers now that we've been hearing so much about.
And I talked to a couple of cardiologists about this, Paula, to try and figure out why this might be. Is it more that the same people who get angry also don't take care of themselves, don't eat right, don't exercise or just some actual mechanism that occurs that actually allows people to have these flare-ups of anger to actually have heart attacks?
And this is what they told me. And here's an animation that sort of describes it. If you -- if you have a...
ZAHN: This looks like our newsroom every day -- daily basis.
GUPTA: New York.
ZAHN: Just kidding. Not New York, it could be a newsroom in Michigan, anywhere in the States.
GUPTA: Correct.
But if you have a blood vessel in the -- near the heart and it actually contracts, like you see there, and you get some athroscerotic plaque (ph) -- everyone's heard about that, the hardening of the arteries -- and then you have a flare-up of your blood pressure for some reason, and in this case perhaps anger, and you actually get a flare-up of your blood pressure, a flare-up of your pulse and some of the plaque, as you can see there, sort of breaks off and could possibly cause a heart attack. This is a real sort of thing. Paula, this is something that actually happens. This is what the cardiologist told me. It could possibly explain why a flare-up of anger could cause a heart attack or cause heart disease.
ZAHN: All right. And what about the chemical trigger here?
GUPTA: Well the chemical trigger is -- whenever you get angry, it's a whole cascade of events take place, including the release of some hormones that give you that flight or fight sort of feeling where you feel like you either want to fight or you want to flee. And it also causes your blood vessels to contract, your blood pressure to go up, your pulse to go up, you get sweaty, all those things happen, and that's epinephrine, that's the hormone that's released.
ZAHN: And then -- I -- it's interesting when you use a comparison, people conceal their anger, because there's always this concern among doctors about the more passive/aggressive folks...
GUPTA: Right. And...
ZAHN: ... who don't blow like a volcano every day, but you know they're simmering in there.
GUPTA: Yes, and one of the interesting things in the article they pointed out is that there is a difference between concealing your anger and sort of letting it pent-up versus literally taking a time- out. An adult time-out is what they called it in the article, counting to 10, going to a place other than the place that's stimulating your anger, doing something to try and get away from that as opposed to just penting it up. And they obviously recommend the time-out sort of thing.
ZAHN: Counting to 10 sometimes is hard to get to. I can make it to five, but that's a very healthy thing, I think, in any relationship. We've all find ourselves in situations where you shouldn't just pop off, you should think for about five to 10 seconds...
GUPTA: Absolutely.
ZAHN: ... before you say what (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
GUPTA: I wish the cabbie last night would have done that when we were driving back...
ZAHN: Oh now you are just beating us up here today.
GUPTA: I love New York.
ZAHN: Has New York been that unpleasant for you?
GUPTA: No, no, I love New York, but there's just a lot of people around here and you see a lot of -- you see a lot of anger.
ZAHN: Well I love my city, and I'm going to defend it royally here. I think I might spend the day with you tomorrow and...
GUPTA: Come to Michigan with me, yes.
ZAHN: ... see how you're -- how you're being treated. He's exaggerating it.
Thanks, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.
GUPTA: Good seeing you.
ZAHN: Hold that anger. Contain it, will you?
GUPTA: I will. Time-out.
ZAHN: Time-out, chill out.
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