So the topic for this week's podcast came to me as a sign. I received two emails this week nearly within the same hour. The first was my daily alert from the American Medical Association that shared some stunning data on the effect of anger on the heart. The second was a weekly article by Arthur Brooks from The Atlantic. The title was, Why a bit of restraint can do you a lot of good. And I thought to myself, how timely, right? As the world seems to be seething with anger, as our campuses are busting at the seams with this emotion, I thought it might be a good time to dig into the emotion of anger. It got me curious and I thought it might be something of curiosity for you too. So this week on Health Bite, we are digging in to the emotion of anger. Welcome back to Health Bite, the podcast where I explore the intersection of science, nutrition, health, and well-being. I'm your host, Dr. Adrienne Youdim. I'm a triple board certified internist, obesity medicine, and physician nutrition specialist. And I just love sharing the science of living well. Thank you for being here on this journey with me. Thank you for taking the time to listen and engage in this topic with me. I really appreciate you being here. And before we start, I have an ask. So many of you reach out to me via Instagram and email or have seen me out and about in the street and have shared with me how much you love the Health By podcast. And yet, we don't have a lot of reviews. So I'm going to make an ask. I ask you to take part in this growth. And if you can, head over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to, and please leave us a review. I'm hoping that five of you, just five of you listening right now, will answer this call. So now on to our episode. As many of you know, I've shared on this podcast, in my TED Talk, and in my book, Hungry for More, I come from a Middle Eastern family. And you may know that Middle Eastern families tend to be spicy and loud. We are loud in how we talk. We are loud in how we feel. And we express those feelings in very loud, in-your-face ways. Anger being one of them. And this created an aversion in me. Anger was something I was afraid of, something I repressed. And even to this day, when I'm met with anger, I freeze. Something that's not very Adrian-esque. And I wonder if this is a common reaction for you as well. Do you freeze when you are met with anger or even your own? Does anger scare you and do you perhaps repress your own anger? It's not an uncommon scenario to repress those negative emotions. And yet, we're taught that no feelings are bad, that we must welcome our feelings, even the presumably negative ones, because they're all there for a reason. They're all there to send us a message, perhaps to right a wrong, or to take notice of something that isn't aligned or working well in our lives. And so, if we can take this emotion as a messenger, as a teacher, as an opportunity, then there is so much good to be gained. Moreover, we know that when we repress our feelings, anger or otherwise, it leads to a discomfort, to a unsettling, that we then are more likely to soothe with smoking, drinking, overworking, and yes, with food. The first article that I received was from the American Heart Association. Actually, it was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association this week. and they looked at the effect of anger on the heart. Following up research and data that has already showed anger to be associated with higher cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes, and yet the link between anger and those disease states is not well known. So they took a bunch of individuals, about 280 of them, and they had them recollect some situation that made them very angry. And then they did a whole bunch of studies on the heart and on the vessels. And what they found was that a burst of anger that was brought about by a thought actually impacted the heart in a negative physiologic way. Namely, blood vessels were less likely to release the proteins that allowed it or them to vasodilate. Now vasodilation of the blood vessels is basically allowing them to dilate or open up. and is associated with bringing down the blood pressure. The inability to vasodilate also predicts stiffness of the arteries. And that stiffness predisposes one to develop atherosclerotic plaques, that buildup that gets in the way of the blood flow that ultimately can cause heart attacks and strokes. So this is really interesting and powerful data that links the emotion of anger to really concrete physiologic changes in the heart and in the vessels that predispose one to develop heart disease. That's mind-blowing. And then, minutes later, I read the Arthur Brooks article. And in that article, he makes the case that despite our increasing comfort with sharing our anger on social media, for example, being open and almost performative at times with our anger, we're not really happier for it. In fact, this rise is associated with a greater degree of unhappiness. And of course, if you take a look at social media and news, you see an ample display of anger. This is something that I think has been on the rise for some time. I think pre-COVID, COVID, social justice, political, or social injustice rather, political polarity, And of course, now the wars that are spanning our globe has just made us more open, not only to reactivity, but also to expressing that reactivity, however it comes, and in particular, in terms of anger. So my question is, as I read these two articles, how do we reconcile this? How do we reconcile the truth that all our emotions are fair game and that we need to allow them, express them and lean into them with the fact that anger physiologically causes changes in our hearts and our bodies that are negatively impactful to our health? with the recognition that also psychologically, it doesn't seem to be doing us a lot of good. So here's my take. Number one, anger is a necessary emotion. Like all feelings, our anger is there to give us a message, to teach us something. And if we are able to lean into the discomfort of that emotion, with mindfulness and clarity, then it may give us an important message. If you are angry at watching the news or world affairs, you may be upset about an injustice. If you're angry viewing what's happening in our campuses, again, you are experiencing a reaction to something that you don't feel is right. And you can take that information to perhaps call out that injustice or to make the wrong a little bit righter through your own actions rather. Maybe you find yourself angry at work, and perhaps that is a message that you're not meant to be there anymore, or that you need to set boundaries around the way that people at work treat you. Maybe you feel anger when you are at home or when you are with the people that you love or within your relationships. Again, leaning into that feeling with mindfulness can give you some information that perhaps you need to have conversations with the people in your lives to better your relationship. Perhaps, again, you need to set some boundaries that will, when done correctly, inform the relationship, actually make the relationship more fruitful and enjoyable and productive for you and the other person involved. While we look at anger as a negative emotion, again, I want you, and I'll do this as well, to question that notion, that it really is something negative or bad or something that we should be afraid of, but rather that it is an emotion that can actually result in really beautiful transformative change in yourself, in your relationships, and even in the world. My next thought is, again, suppression of this or any of our feelings for that matter has a negative impact on our health and well-being and will make us more likely to soothe. So when a feeling or emotion bubbles up, if we are not able to give it the space and presence that it requires and or is asking for, that emotion chips away at us. It chips away at our soul and percolates. So just because we suppress it doesn't mean that we have dealt with it or moved past it. It just means that we haven't given ourselves an opportunity to be with it. And when done over time, unexpressed emotions like anger or otherwise are going to build and they will cause ultimately the desire to soothe or the need to soothe in order to suppress. And in the end, we're hardly able to suppress them forever. So as I always say, the dam eventually will break. And when it does, that anger will likely come out in a way that is not productive, that is counterproductive to your goals, and will ultimately have the very impact that you are trying to prevent by suppressing it. So rather than suppress, again, let's lean into it and allow it to inform our decision-making so that we can act in a way that is actually kind and compassionate to ourselves and to and towards the people for whom we feel that anger. And what I believe at the core is that, as always, it comes down to pause. The ability to recognize the emotion, to recognize the feeling, and to pause before our habitual reaction, whether that reaction is to pass off our anger onto somebody else, or to process it in a way that is healthy rather than to suppress and squander. So when we create pause, we give ourselves the opportunity to process this feeling in a productive and mindful way. So how do we do that? Well, it does take a little bit of practice. But the first step is awareness. notice what the emotion is. Sometimes we bypass the emotion so quickly that we have squashed it down before we even have a chance to name it or to even acknowledge its presence. And if you notice, These emotions, our emotions, are very much not only thought of in the mind, but very much felt in the body. And anger is one that we really can tap into. The signs in our body are loud and clear. So take a minute and notice where you feel it in your body. Maybe your jaws clench or tighten up. Maybe you feel a grip or a vice around your heart. Maybe you feel a bubbling in your gut. Notice the feeling. Name what is happening. Literally say to yourself, wow, I can sense my shoulders tightening up. I feel my jaws clenched. And then name the emotion. I'm feeling angry right now. or I'm feeling irate, try and be as specific as you can. And merely naming that emotion, well first, taking time to feel that and experience that emotion gives you a moment of pause. Naming it further disbars it from all of its reactivity. And remember, when we act from a place of reactivity, we cannot act from a place of intention. Next, take the steps to process it properly. And here are where some mind-body practices come into play. Breathing is a great one because as I have shared with you before, just three to five deep breaths brings about presence and intention and physiologically ratchets down our body's reactivity. Heart rate comes down, blood pressure comes down. When we do this, we send a message to our brain and to our gut that there is actually a greater degree of, I don't wanna use the word control, but essentially that we've got this, that everything is okay. And that message gets sent to the mind, to the gut, and then it kind of creates its own little loop, further settling down the cardiovascular system. So breathing is great. Meditation is great. Maybe you need to go outside and take a walk or just be at one with nature. I've shared with you before how merely being in nature, listening to streams or the sounds of birds, smelling the smells of nature, the smell of herbs, for example, or plants, literally stimulates the parasympathetic or the rest and relax part of the nervous system, which is an antidote to the sympathetic nervous system that anger triggers. Maybe you want to go for a run or just move your body in a way that is cathartic. We teach in mind-body practice is a shaking practice. Put on a drum beat and just shake vigorously. Shake your arms, shake your body, shake your legs. Jump, do some lunges, turn yourself or whirl yourself around. This is a way to move that emotion through your body and to express it in a way that is productive and meaningful. Maybe you want to take to a journal. and write down what you're feeling. Journaling is such a powerful way of processing and settling your emotions. And there are so many more. And you can create your own rituals. Maybe you want to light a candle, say a prayer, take a bath, sit with your dog, right? share some oxytocin by petting your dog or hugging him or her. These are all ways in which you can help self-regulate. You can help regulate your own nervous system. And then it is from that place of acknowledging your emotions, feeling your emotions in your body, giving it time and space to think about that emotion that you can process what it is it's trying to tell you, and then think about some meaningful ways in which you can use that anger to inform your actions. Again, if we can use our emotions and our feelings and tap into our gut To understand why they're bubbling up and what we can learn from them, what we can take from them, they can be really powerful vehicles of change, not only for ourselves, but for the greater world around us. But we can't do that, once again, when we are acting from a place of reactivity. So I hope and I want you to perhaps reframe your notion of anger. There's no shortage of it right now. You can see the anger pretty much all around you. Instead of reacting back or suppressing, notice what comes up for you. take some time to process it in a self-compassionate way and then ask yourself, how can I use this feeling for my greater good, for the greater good of my relationship or my workplace? How can I use it to inform the person on the other side so that we can come to some understanding or reconciliation that will ultimately foster a more loving, connected and understanding relationship? How can I use this emotion to make things right in my workplace? How can I use it to have a conversation that might make things better for me, for those who I serve, or for what I am doing or serving within my work? And then Think about how this can be implied and utilized in the greater world. I truly believe that every act that we engage in on the personal level can and will have ripple effects that ripple out into our homes and our workplaces and our communities and out into the world. So if like me, you are witnessing anger out there, and like me, you are experiencing it internally, and maybe like me, it puts you a little bit off kilter or maybe even scares you or freezes you, I want you to make an active intention to reframe your thoughts and feelings about anger and ask yourself how you can use it in a way that is productive to yourself and to the people around you. I hope that this seed gives you some food for thought. I appreciate your attention this week and every week on Health Bite. Don't forget to write us a review. Please, please, please. I want at least five of them this week if possible. And I look forward to sharing this time again with you next week right here on Health Bite. Until then, sending you light and love. Bye now.