This article is part of All the Rage, an editorial package that digs into the science of anger. SELF will be publishing new articles for this series all week. Read more here.
Think about the last time you felt really angry: that boiling sensation rising in your gut, heart pounding, muscles tightening, and (maybe) feeling an impulse to break whatever’s in your path. Turns out your body really is having a moment: All emotions—the good, the bad, and everything in between—can cause a cascade of physical responses, impacting everything from your muscular and cardiovascular systems to your hormones and nerves.
Most of us get angry, to some degree, on a regular basis. Anger can signal that you were wronged in some way, show potential enemies you can defend yourself, and prime your body for action in stressful scenarios. “Anger alerts us to a potential injustice, and it energizes us to confront that injustice,” Ryan Martin, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay and the author of Why We Get Mad: How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change, tells SELF.
When you’re hit with anger, your brain evaluates whether the situation is potentially threatening to your health. Once emotions are processed, that information is sent to a structure called the hypothalamus, which is responsible for keeping your body in a stable, balanced state. “The hypothalamus kicks off what is commonly referred to as the sympathetic nervous system, or the fight-or-flight system,” Dr. Martin explains. Your body then pumps out hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, triggering the physical effects mentioned above. Meanwhile, anything that’s not considered essential to your immediate survival—such as your digestive system—slows way down.
“This is a typical stress response,” Stefanie Duijndam, PhD, an assistant professor at Tilburg University and a researcher with the Center of Research on Psychological Disorders and Somatic Diseases in the Netherlands, tells SELF. “Anger is evolutionarily seen as a very important emotion. If it’s well expressed, it’s fine. It’s there for a reason, and it’s good for our survival.”
How much anger is “too much”?
It’s okay to suppress anger momentarily—as long as you cope with your feelings eventually. “There are always situations in real life that make you feel irritated. As long as it passes, it’s fine,” Dr. Duijndam says. “It’s unhealthy when it starts to take over your life.”
Feeling persistent anger primes you for a fight—or what psychologists call “trait hostility.” A tendency to hostility—which is used to describe people who are cynical and aggressive toward others—can stem from personal insecurities or tough circumstances that make a person feel defensive, Dr. Duijndam explains. You may frequently “put people down and criticize everything,” she says. Constant complainers might then get labeled as “toxic,” adds Dr. Martin. “They end up not having as many friends or supportive family members that they can go to in times of distress,” he says.
Ultimately, it’s your reaction to anger that influences its possible effects on your health. “Your body was not designed to live in that state for long periods of time,” Dr. Martin says. “It’s supposed to get you out of a momentary threat.” If you let fury overwhelm you—say, you consistently find yourself angrily ruminating for even a few hours, let alone for days to weeks—the stream of stress hormones will continue to be released into your body, and “this could lead to health problems in the long-term,” Dr. Duijndam says.
Here’s what you should know about the many ways anger can impact your body in the long run, and what to do if you’re concerned about how it might be taking a toll on your health.
1. Heightened inflammation
A growing body of research suggests chronic stress, as well as the negative emotions associated with it, is strongly linked to higher levels of inflammation in the body and dysfunctional immune system responses.
Your immune system is designed to attack potential threats to your body with inflammatory cells, Dr. Duijndam explains. “With chronic stress, including anger, these markers of inflammation increase as well.” So even if you don’t have, say, an infection brewing, these inflammatory cells may start to get rowdy and go after healthy cells instead if you’re a person who deals with lots of anger, she says. That, in turn, can set the stage for various health issues, especially as you age.
For example, a 2019 study that followed 226 older adults for one week found that those who had higher levels of self-reported anger were more likely to have higher levels of inflammation and a higher risk of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, osteoarthritis, diabetes, and even certain cancers.
On top of that, constantly feeling rage-y can also impact your everyday habits, some of which may lead to further inflammation, or simply damage your health in other ways. “The significant confound we have in any of this research is that people who are chronically angry tend to engage in lots of unhealthy behaviors,” Dr. Martin says, such as smoking, excessive drinking, and overeating or loading up on food that isn’t as nutritious as it could be. “Those unhealthy behaviors will have an impact too,” he stresses.
2. Heart disease
“The bulk of the evidence that we have on the health consequences of anger really has to do with the heart and [the rest of the] cardiovascular system, and we’ve known that for decades,” Dr. Martin says.
Try to do a quick body scan the next time your blood starts to boil—that is, take a moment to notice how the various parts of your body feel, one by one—and it won’t be hard to understand why anger can do a number on your heart. “When you keep ruminating in a state of anger, it leads to poor cardiovascular recovery,” says Dr. Duijndam. Again, that’s because “it keeps you in a state of stress.”
Anger can spike your blood pressure and heart rate, two factors that place immense pressure on your heart muscle and therefore heighten the risk of chronic hypertension. An influx of stress hormones can also boost your blood sugar levels and blood fatty acid levels, which can damage blood vessels and lead to plaque buildup in the arteries, respectively. That’s one reason why regularly getting and staying angry could potentially play a role in conditions like cardiovascular disease, heart attack, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
3. Reduced lung function
Quick and shallow breathing is one of the first physical effects anger triggers for many people. “When we need to ‘fight or flight’ from a situation that’s threatening, it makes sense,” Dr. Duijndam says. It’s your body’s way of trying to supply more oxygen to areas it perceives as essential, like the brain and muscles. It follows, then, that strong emotions like anger are a common trigger for asthma attacks in those who are susceptible.
But researchers have noted that certain emotions may impact your overall lung health as well. One study, for example, involved 670 older men, who answered a survey to measure their levels of hostility (remember, that refers to people who tend to be cynical and aggressive). The men also had several lung function tests over an eight-year period. (Lung function naturally declines as you age, which can affect your breathing; lower scores are associated with conditions like asthma and COPD.)
The researchers found that higher levels of hostility were linked to poorer lung function scores at baseline, as well as a faster rate of lung function decline over time, whether the men smoked or not. The authors posit that negative emotions may spur—you guessed it—inflammation throughout the body, including the lungs, which can then contribute to the development of various pulmonary diseases.
4. Chronic pain
When you’re in a fit of rage, you may actually feel heat moving from your core into areas like your chest, arms, and jaw. “If it’s not expressed, anger can definitely lead to muscle tension,” Dr. Duijndam stresses. And becoming a bundle of bad vibes can trigger achiness or serious pain.
Think about the last time you had a gnarly headache: Were your neck and shoulders feeling especially stiff too? It’s not all in your head: In a 2022 study, researchers asked nearly 500 people with and without migraine to complete questionnaires about their responses to anger; they found that those with migraine headaches experienced more intense anger and scored lower on a scale of emotional intelligence, or the ability to recognize, understand, and manage their emotions.
Another 2022 paper reviewed existing research on emotions and nociplastic pain, a term that is used to describe nonspecific pain that isn’t linked to a clear cause like tissue damage, such as the type of pain one might feel from a condition like fibromyalgia. The authors note that pain caused by conditions “characterized by ongoing injury,” like osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis, activates parts of the brain involved in the sensation of touch. Nociplastic pain, on the other hand, activates parts of the brain involved in regulating emotions. People who live with chronic back pain without a clear cause, for example, tend to experience more muscle tension when they’re angry. In other words, for some people, a physical expression of pain can potentially be triggered by strong emotions, including anger.
5. Digestive problems
Your gut—which includes your stomach, large intestine, and small intestine—has its own nervous system; it functions even without your brain and actually has more neurons than the entire spinal cord. These include sensory neurons that monitor what’s going on in your gut, along with motor neurons that control gastrointestinal (GI) contractions responsible for digestion.
Your gut and your brain are a two-way highway; when your fight-or-flight system is frequently activated, the brain can actually influence the contractions involved in digestion, leading to symptoms like nausea, constipation, diarrhea, and stomach pain.
It’s not totally surprising, then, that GI disorders such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and chronic constipation have been linked to a disruption in the gut-brain relationship. People with GI disorders may also be more sensitive to pain signals from the GI tract, which can worsen symptoms.
One very small 2014 study of 60 people with IBS and 45 people without the condition found that the IBS group scored higher on tests for general anger susceptibility. The authors hypothesized that because the same brain pathways are involved in anger and pain, this could make people more susceptible to both IBS and anger. “There are some studies that show that the suppression of anger is related to more symptoms in people with IBS,” Dr. Duijndam adds.
6. Skin flare-ups
Similar to the gut, the skin may also react to emotional stress. “So many [skin conditions] are related to an inappropriate release of inflammatory chemicals,” Richard Fried, MD, PhD, a dermatologist, clinical psychologist, and clinical director of Yardley Dermatology, previously told SELF.
That inflammation can trigger a flare-up if you’re already living with a condition like eczema, psoriasis, hormonal acne, or rosacea. For example, a 2020 review of 41 studies that looked at the relationship between negative emotions and skin disorders noted that, while little research has specifically looked at anger, some studies seem to link a difficulty communicating anger to psoriasis and chronic hives. This doesn’t necessarily mean feeling really angry all the time will directly cause certain skin conditions—but handling powerful emotions might make them trickier to manage.
On top of that, how your skin fares when you’re feeling furious, once again, comes back to how you cope with anger. If you tend to touch or pick at your face a lot when you’re feeling stressed, anxious, or irritated, that’s only going to make a breakout worse. Plus, if your rage is causing you to miss out on sleep and eat or drink poorly, your skin can subsequently take a hit.
Noticing and naming anger can help reduce the risk of its long-term effects.
Dr. Duijndam says that with work, ideally with the help of a licensed therapist, you can learn to replace catastrophic, rage-induced thoughts with level-headed ones.
And don’t rely on catharsis for relief; anger just begets more anger. “There’s this prevalent myth, even among therapists, that breaking things in a ‘safe’ way is a good way to release your anger,” Dr. Martin says. “But we have 50 years of research to say it’s not just ineffective, but it’s bad for you. It increases anger and the likelihood of acting aggressive later on.”
Instead, start with these therapist-approved tips for coping with anger, which will help calm your nervous system instead of revving it up.
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