The new study, published on May 1 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, randomly assigned 280 healthy adults to four tasks designed to evoke different emotions. These tasks included recalling events that made them angry, recalling events that made them anxious, and reading descriptors to evoke sadness. The control group was instructed to induce an neutral state by repeatedly counting to 100.
Each task lasted eight minutes. The results showed that people who recalled past events that made them angry experienced impaired vasodilation function, which lasted for 40 minutes before returning to normal. Those who recalled feelings of anxiety and sadness did not show any significant changes.
The study also found that the more intense the anger episode, the greater the risk. Within 15 minutes of an anger outburst, the incidence of ventricular arrhythmia increased by 1.83 times compared to other times; from 15 minutes to two hours afterward, the incidence increased by 1.
35 times compared to other times. Furthermore, in the hour following intense anger, the incidence of ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation increased by 16.7 times compared to other times; after moderate anger, the incidence increased by 3.
20 times. The researchers also found that in men, the frequency of anger increased the incidence of heart failure by 30 percent, while in women, it only increased by two percent. Additionally, compared to participants without a history of diabetes, the frequen.