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| Picture Credit: Godwordsecret.com |
Everyone gets angry. But according to Dr. Don Colbert, M.D., author of Deadly Emotions, anger can profoundly damages your health. “Depression, anger, guilt, condemnation, low self-esteem…these are only a few of the lethal toxins…,” Dr. Colbert warns. He supports these claims with scientific evidence about the effects of anger on the physiological aspect.
Simply put, the aftereffects of anger triggers a biologically-embedded “fight-or-flight” response. In ancient times, when human beings faced physical threats like animal predators, the fight-or-flight response saved our lives by pumping our bodies with hormones and chemicals necessary to fuel intense physical action. However, in modern life, that response is unnecessary 99% of the time.
Worse yet, the fight-or-flight response is actually killing us, according to Peter McWilliams, author of You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought: A Book for People with Any Life-Threatening Illness—Including Life.
When anger kicks in, your body readies itself to respond to a perceived threat. Your muscles tense…your digestive processes stop…and certain brain centers start firing in ways that alter your brain chemistry.These functions reflect our genetically-coded response to danger. Unfortunately, nowadays, these strong chemical reactions are inappropriately triggered by minor annoyances—like getting cut off in traffic or being spoken to unkindly. For modern humans, even thinking about a stressful situation can spark a full-blown “fight-or-flight” response. In fight-or-flight, your body’s resources mobilize for immediate physical action. Any bodily function not directly related to fighting or fleeing is put on hold, including:Digestion, Assimilation, Cell production, Body maintenance, Circulation (except to the skeletal muscles involved in the fight-or-flight process), Healing, Immunological defenses.
The health consequences of continual fight-or-flight response can be severe. According to Dr. Mercola (a highly regarded and widely published natural health practitioner) our automatic anger response leads to health problems like:
Headaches, Digestive imbalances, Insomnia, Anxiety, Depression, High blood pressure, Skin problems, including eczema, Heart attack, and even Stroke.
Is Your Anger Putting You At Risk for Heart Problems?
Unresolved anger is bad for your health: Angry cynical people die young. Research shows that men who score high for hostility on standard tests are four times more likely to die prematurely than men whose scores are low.
Late one summer evening in Broken Bow, Nebraska, a weary truck driver pulled his rig into an all-night truck stop. The waitress had just served him when three tough-looking, leather-jacketed motorcyclists - of the Hell’s Angels type - decided to give him a hard time. Not only did they verbally abuse him, one grabbed the hamburger off his plate, another took a handful of his french fries, and the third picked up his coffee and began to drink it. How would you respond? Well, this trucker did not respond as one might expect. Instead, he calmly rose, picked up his check, walked to the front of the room, put the check and his money on the cash register, and went out the door. The waitress followed him to put the money in the till and stood watching out the door as the big truck drove away into the night. When she returned, one of the bikers said to her, "Well, he’s not much of a man, is he?" She replied, "I don’t know about that, but he sure ain’t much of a truck driver. He just ran over three motorcycles on his way out of the parking lot."
Our Wisdom Nugget says "for anger and vexation lodge in the bosom of fools." Remember we have said before you have a right to be angry, but to allow anger to "lodge" or "rest" in your heart is foolish. Remember the old chinese proverb : "You cannot stop a bird from flying over your head but you must stop it from nesting on your head".
That is why Mark Twain said: "Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."
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