Anger can make you sick - and fat!
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Have you ever found yourself fidgeting in a grocery line while someone ahead of you produces coupon after coupon? Or how about when a sarcastic remark slips out when your mate does something irritating? Minor as it seems, you are experiencing anger.
Everyone gets angry from time to time but it’s what we do with that anger that can have far reaching effects on our health.
Anger is an emotional and physiological reaction to an event that floods our bodies with cortisol and adrenaline. Men and women tend to react differently. For instance, feelings of anger in men often escalate to aggression while with women, they tend to dwell on the experience of anger by talking about it with friends and family. Simply put, he puts a hole in the wall with his fist and she talks about the outrageous things so-and-so has done.
He: "*#!*^$!" This occurs once and then he goes to the garage to get putty.
She: "I couldn't believe what she said! The nerve of her! I was so angry that I couldn't even see straight! Honestly, when I see her again I'm going to.. blah blah blah." This occurs over and over again until the feelings are vented.
Needless to say, hers continues for a lot longer than is healthy and his can have serious and sometimes immediate health consequences.
Unresolved anger in women tends to cause more symptoms of depression while in men, it can lead to high blood pressure and cardiac incidents.
Men with higher rates of hostility experience more rapid decline as they age and often suffer from poor pulmonary function.
People with less control over their anger also tend to heal more slowly and produce more cortisol, indicating they may be more stressed by difficult situations.
Excess cortisol can result in dreaded belly fat, a condition directly related to a multitude of health problems like diabetes, metabolic syndrome and heart disease. Before we start painting cortisol as a bad guy though, we need to understand how it works.
Cortisol is a vitally important hormone that aids in blood pressure regulation, glucose metabolism, and immune function. When we are faced with a pitbull coming at us or a near miss in a head-on collision, it kicks in along with adrenaline as part of the fight or flight response and actually boosts our immunity and memory while reducing our sensitivity to pain. It becomes a problem when it is produced excessively and this happens when we allow anger too great a place in our emotional lives.
So yes, anger can make you fat.
Try adding magnesium to your diet and exercise when you feel stressed. Go for a long walk or a bike ride. Rhodiola is an excellent herb that is proving to be highly effective for stress reduction.
As with any response that you wish to change, finding the triggers is key. Chart your reactions and learn to identify what sets you off. Remember, this is not genetic. You have a choice.
The video below may help you look at anger a different way. It might be 10 minutes that can change your life.
© 2011 by Alexandra Lucas/SilverGenes. All rights reserved
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Hi SilverGenes, this could explain me putting on weight lately, I had no idea that anger/stress could cause this!
Thank you for sharing a very interesting article, voting up, best wishes Mm
Well, I knew that anger could make you sick. I'm very lucky that I learned early on to let it go. But didn't know it could make you fat. Really good article...thanks
Martie, thank you for that great comment and for the vote of confidence in my ability to deal with anger. I'm not sure I quite fit the category of controlling it in all circumstances though. There are times... Funny you should mention control though. As a child of 5 or 6, I had terrible temper and because I had been exposed to racial stereotyping, used to excuse it by telling my mother I was Irish (she was not - she was Scottish). Her response was to stay with me all my life. She said something along these lines: "It's a fine thing to be Irish but there is never an excuse for losing control - we always choose our reaction regardless of the situation. It is always your choice. So the next time you react I will be interested to see what choice you make now that you know how it works." From that moment on, I knew I was accountable and it took "the jam out of my wee bun" as far as excuses went LOL.
Movie Master, it's the dreaded excess cortisol that contributes so well to this sad state of affairs. Rhodiola is doing very, very nicely in clinical trials and may be worth trying if you are stressed. Some kinds are better than others but there is lots of information online now. Thank you so much for stopping to read and comment! :)
alekhouse, you are a very wise woman. Once we get our reactions under control, doing something with the emotions that may be bubbling under the surface is another matter. I love this quote from Ann Landers: "Hanging onto resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free in your head." Thanks so much for visiting!
Wow , its a great revelation for me , i never thought anger makes us worse this way, all i knew was the health side effects of getting angry . Thanks , now i know why i am getting fat , lol , too much irating customers in the bank and i get angry soon now .lol
Aceblogs, you made me laugh! With that sense of humor, I'm surprised you get irritated hahaha. Customers could certainly do it though! Thanks so much for stopping by and I sure enjoyed your comment! :)
Anger can make us sick, we all know this. But Anger also can make us fat, this was quite new to me.
Well actually, when I'm angry I eat more and more. This eating disorder is also one of the reasons why I struggle with my weight.
Vinaya, thanks for stopping by! That's quite true about people eating more when they are angry. And when we are stressed in the first place and producing extra cortisol, that extra comfort food is even worse. Today's world has made it increasingly difficult to let go of stress. Now if only broccoli had the same qualities as chocolate! ;-)
This is a great article Silvergenes, Thanks for sharing this. I too knew that anger can cause health issues but never thought weight gain. I don't have the weight problem, well yes I do, I lost 30 lbs and need to gain. But anyway great job!
This is an interesting hub. As you say, I have also found that it’s not anger itself that’s the problem but how we then react to the feeling. I found your gender differentiation interesting. Girls in particular are generally taught that anger is wrong and I’ve recently come to see that far from making us drop anger this just makes us hold on - to try and justify our feelings. Hence the: “He said…” scenario you describe. Whereas when we accept the feeling we can then choose how to react without needing to play a blame game, much as your mother taught you.
I find it helpful just to feel the physical feeling in my body and then to choose to let go.
Voted up.
Curiad, thank you for the kind words! After the birth of my first child I simply couldn't gain any weight at all and really needed to add about 10 pounds. That can be as frustrating as trying to lose weight. When you think about it, our bodies are remarkable organisms, prepared for just about anything and everything - except modern life.
Melovy, thank you. Isn't it interesting how many things come back around to what we learned as small children? A classic place to watch young women preparing for fat bellies is on Facebook. We often overlook technology as a source of stress and anger but it is often responsible for more drama than 'real life'. Letting go is the best thing any of us could do. How do you let go?
HI Silvergenes,
To answer your question, I generally find that allowing or welcoming the anger means it releases by itself, and if not I sometimes ask myself, “Would I be willing to let it go?” The willingness is usually enough, which seems pretty much what your mother was saying I think. (The techniques I use I’ve learned from the Sedona Method, which I will get round to writing about in more detail at some point.)
Another good reason to not let things get to us!! As you've pointed out in your hub, belly fat is not good for our health, so we should find ways of dealing with and then letting go of our anger for the good of our own health. I find that going for a run can make the world seem like a better place for me.
An interesting hub.
I knew that anger could make you ill but it is new to me that it can also have such an impact in your weight. Like you mentioned here excercise is a great way to keep stress levels down and also helps to control weight problems. Thumbs up!
Melovey, the older I get, the more sense my mother makes! Just the fact that we have a choice in how we react is empowering and therefore calming. I like your question about willingness - yes, I think that's what it is really all about. I'm really looking forward to your article on the Sedona method.
debbie, running would be an excellent way to release some of that pent up-anger. I think it's what nature thought we'd be doing anyway (fight or flight response) so probably one day we will find that it not only works emotionally, but may indeed restore our chemical balance as well.
Princessa, thank you. I think we will learn a lot more about our body chemistry and emotions over the next couple of decades. In spite of all the advances in medical care, our modern way of life seems to be causing havoc in ways that we couldn't have imagined a few decades ago. Getting the balance back is key!
Very useful hub:) The CDC finds that stress contributes, one way or another to over 90% of all health problems. And as you've eluded to, anger creates or contributes to stress and through the whole body chemically off balance.
Kris, we do tend to nurse our anger for social reasons to the detriment of our health. Sometimes I think we have strayed too far from our physical selves while promoting 'ideal' ways of handling situations - exercise is what we did a thousand years ago. We ran away from a threat as fast as we could or we lifted a sword and went at it. Either way, we got a workout. Today, a visit to the gym or a brisk walk may be a better idea ;-)
What a wonderful hub, you have changed my view point completely. I was using anger as exercise for a long time as I was told to get my heart rate up for a continuous 20 minutes 3 times a week. I would storm around the apartment carrying on like a prat then suddenly stop when the 20 min was up. I thought it was doing me good. Thanks for straightening me out. F.
Hi Felina and thank you! Storming around and letting it all out is a lot better idea than nursing it so you may have been doing something constructive after all. It's those leftover hormones with nowhere to go that cause the problems. You know, I was reading a book called Wishcraft (it's been around longer than some adults) and the author suggests letting go and having a tantrum can be a rather good thing to do. Two-year-olds do it a lot and then just carry on having fun. Wishcraft suggests this might be a good way to get rid of all that stored negativity, negative self-talk etc. but with the caveat to let those around you know that you are merely doing an exercise and are not stark raving mad. LOL.
Alexandra, this was such an interesting hub. I work in a job where I cannot lose my cool (front of house, dealing with awkward people who are a pain in the a*se most of the time) but this has led to me bottle up my anger rather than have a 'release' of it, probably not a good idea - I need some inner peace (and for people to leave me alone :o)
Excellent advice, I will look out for that herb coming to health food shops and get some magnesium.
Jools, people in customer service of any kind deserve a medal but perhaps a good massage once a week would be better :-) Laughter works, too, and I have a feeling you have that part covered quite well. Thanks for the kind words and here's to some inner peace for all of us!
MartieCoetser Level 8 Commenter 7 months ago
SilverGenes, this is really interesting. I am a firm believer in anger-control, and most of the time I am able to understand the motives (mostly in ignorance) of a person who is playing with my triggers, therefor I don't get angry, but only irritated. But then comes the moment a person may pull a trigger to hard, and I will explode... And you know what is an explosion. Devastating, but quickly over. And then the damage has to be repaired, and so often it is irreparable. I'm coming back to watch the video. I do learn a lot from you, and I envy you because you have acquired the skills needed to control anger in all circumstances.
PS: I have fifteen if not twenty pounds of anger to get rid of.