Sign in / up

back to article Chillax, cranky commentards: Anger can KILL YOU

A new study has shown that within the first two hours after an angry outburst, you're five times more likely to suffer a heart attack and four times more likely to have a stroke than if you had kept your cool. To reach this conclusion, a trio of researchers from Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center performed a " …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Dr Stephen Jones

    From the review:

    "There are several limitations to the analyses that the authors acknowledge. The small number of available studies to include in the meta-analysis and their significant heterogeneity speaks to a paucity of overall evidence in this area and substantially complicates the interpretation of their pooled estimates. In addition, given the relatively consistent findings across studies and the difficulty in combining their results using meta-analytic techniques, it is unclear whether combining studies that used such disparate methods provides incrementally more additional information than the individual studies alone."

    Of the nine studies, only one has a decent sample size. The studies can't be aggregated or compared. The rest of this meta-analysis is just padding.

    5 0
  2. Mark 85

    Well...

    I would get really testy and blow up over this, but....

    0 0
    1. Frankee Llonnygog
      Reply Icon

      Re: Well...

      Typical pseudo-scientific CLAPTRAP!! What a load of absolute BOLLOCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC......................

      6 0
  3. frank ly

    Isn't it even worse for you ....

    ...if you keep your anger bottled up inside?

    2 0
    1. GitMeMyShootinIrons
      Reply Icon

      Re: Isn't it even worse for you ....

      Only for everyone else on the day your bottled up rage explodes and you go all D Fens (Gratuitous Falling Down reference).

      6 0
      1. Flakey
        Reply Icon

        Re: Isn't it even worse for you ....

        have an up vote for the reference to a great movie

        1 1
    2. Jim 59
      Reply Icon

      Re: Isn't it even worse for you ....

      I heard on the radio that exploding in anger is actually worse than bottling it up. The "exploding" person is like to lose their temper again, and more often, because venting the anger acts as a kind of "reward". The more you vent the more angry you get.

      1 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Isn't it even worse for you ....

        I read that too....endorphins or something, so exploders tend to repeat the behaviour. Until presumably, the real world slaps them down.

        0 0
  4. jake Silver badge

    Who gets emotional over text?

    It's just ASCII, and easily ignored.

    0 6
    1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: Who gets emotional over text?

      Who gets emotional over movies? They're just images on a screen.

      Who gets emotional over plays? They're just dressed-up people on stage.

      Who gets emotional over spoken words? They're just noise coming from the flapping gums of your inferiors.

      Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, it turns out that human beings communicate with each other through a variety of media, of which the "written" word (now taking the form of text on screens as well as ink on paper) is but one. PROTIP: people often have emotional reactions to things they read, regardless of the specific medium via which those words are conveyed.

      1 1
      1. jake Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Who gets emotional over text?

        Commentardery doesn't get my hackles up. Ever.

        Just remember that I am allowed to point out the stupidity of said commentardery, if and as needed, in my opinion.

        1st Amendment & all that. One of the good thingies about being a US citizen.

        0 2
        1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
          Reply Icon
          Gimp

          Re: Who gets emotional over text?

          "Just remember that I am allowed to point out the stupidity of said commentardery, if and as needed, in my opinion."

          Quid pro quo, Clarice. Quid pro quo.

          1 0
  5. heyrick Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Breaking news...

    Stressy people stress themselves, stuff may break.

    Duh.

    3 0
    1. tony2heads
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: Breaking news...

      I thought that this was know for centuries see for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Agricola

      PS. I hear that members of the Ursidae family defecate in silvan areas

      3 4
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Breaking news...

        PS: I get pissed off when people try to be all arty farty and get up their own backsides trying to use clever phrases they've noted down waiting for the chance to use them. It's not original anymore, why don't you just say bears shit in the woods?

        However that comes a distant third to those who finish with "end of" and the worst of the lot "simples".

        4 2

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Breaking news...

            "It makes me mad. Fuckers."

            Try to cultivate, instead, an attitude of cold, mildly amused contempt.

            1 0
        2. heyrick Silver badge
          Reply Icon
          Coat

          Re: Breaking news...

          @ Chris: "PS: I get pissed off when" would seem to be a textbook example of what is being discussed. After all, should you really be getting that agitated because somebody is using the smart-ass word for "bear"? Just relax. Simples! In the long run, it really doesn't matter. End of. Oh, oops.

          1 0
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Science to the rescue

    So true. That's why I have outsourced writing comments, and look at the internet in general, to a bot.

    Bots do not have hearts or brains that break. And they are not easily swayed by ads, nor are they jealous of other bots' Facebook posts. The Internet of Bots (R).

    1 0
  7. Ketlan
    Pint

    Everything kills you!

    So losing your temper kills you, having the odd cigarette kills you, too much booze kills you and now we're told that too much protein kills you. We're clearly doomed no matter what we do so I'm off to the pub.

    6 0
    1. Khaptain Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Pint

      Re: Everything kills you!

      Even more succint, "Life kills you", eventually.....

      Mine's a Guiness and don't forget the peanuts.

      1 0
  8. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Coat

    That's all fine and well, but they kind of miss the point, which is my anger can kill you. So, FUCKING STOP TO FUCKING ANNOY ME, okay?

    5 0
  9. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
    Devil

    If this is true...

    How come the entire readership and staff of The Daily Mail haven't dropped dead yet?

    I guess we can answer for the staff. You can't have a heart attack, if you don't have a heart...

    7 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: If this is true...

      When will you lot learn? The Dailymail has some of the best authors of any red top. They know what to write to get the response they want from the readership and allow through only the comments that act as catalysts for said reaction. Take for example the price of a house, someone dies they mention the price of their house and there are hundreds of comments about it not being relevant, beautiful and so predictable almost like being on here. Story about Dixons and I know there will be comments about them not deserving to be trading, how as a foetus someone reset the password on the demo machines and the shop assistant didn't know what to do and loads of other hilarious jests played on the staff.

      3 0
      1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: If this is true...

        Actually I agree. The Daily Mail is a brilliantly put together product. It's designed to get its readerships' blood boiling ever so often. Along with news, celeb stories, human interest type stuff etc. I believe they've been the paper that's lost the least circulation consistently for the last decade. So they're doing something right.

        Personally I hate reading it. Sadly a whole bunch of the editorial staff seem to have gone off to the Telegraph, and taken that in a similar direction.

        1 0
    2. Obitim
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Re: If this is true...

      Daily Fail readers sold their souls to the devil for immortality. he just didn't stop the ageing (or raging) process

      0 2
  10. g e

    And there I was, ...

    Hoping this made Daily Mail readers a Darwinian thing

    0 1
  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Folk wisdom

    Curiously, when I lived in Argentina as a young boy, the locals used to tell angry people soothingly, "No te da mala sangre" - "Don't give yourself bad blood". According to this research, the mechanism of harm is indeed through the composition of the blood.

    2 0
  12. PatientOne

    If anger can kill, then is someone who makes me angry attempting to murder me?

    And if someone is trying to murder me, then I have the right to defend myself...

    where's the cattle prod?

    4 0
  13. cortland

    Be nice?

    Two words: Medical Marijuana.

    Can't make 'em WORSE.

    0 0
  14. John B Stone
    Trollface

    So the general advice of "don't feed the troll" is wrong, or rather is done for the general well being of the troll? If we feed them there would be fewer of them.

    0 0
  15. BlueGreen

    to heal a hostile heart

    I feel a ballad coming on.

    1 0
  16. Androgynous Cupboard Silver badge

    And in related news

    The average life expectancy of a contributer to the BBC's "Have You Say" comments section was reported as 48. Only slightly higher than their average IQ.

    1 0
  17. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Megaphone

    So thats

    whats f***ed my heart up

    All I really need then is a beautiful stress free day without any cares in the world, and to imagine a clear blue lake, reflecting the clouds in sky as they drift past, and I look down into the lake and watch the annoying little f***er drown who blew up one of my robots at 3.35pm resulting in me having to do an emergency rebuild that takes 90 mins while the boss screams about line downtime.!!!!!

    AAAAAAAAAARrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhh <thud>

    0 0
  18. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Serotonin what now?

    serotonin-release inhibitors

    Serotonin reuptake inhibitors, surely, were prescribed in a (failed) attempt to reduce stress for heart-attack survivors? I've never heard of anyone being prescribed a serotonin release inhibitor, and while such drugs might exist, they certainly don't seem to be commonly used. There are conditions in which you want to reduce the effectivity of serotonin - generally for antiemitic purposes - but the pharmacological approach seems to be receptor antagonists and not some mechanism for interfering with release.

    And, of course, SRIs (particularly SSRIs like Prozac, Celexa, etc) enjoyed a period of huge popularity in the 1990s, and were prescribed for pretty much everything. They're still widely prescribed, of course, though the public fascination has died down.

    1 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like