Anger more than doubles risk of suffering heart attack, new study finds

A merry heart does good like medicine, says the biblical proverb. Now it seems an angry one might send you to the ER.

A new study finds a strong correlation between anger and heart attacks in first-time heart-attack patients, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

“The study, published in the journal Circulation, found that being angry or emotionally upset more than doubled the risk of suffering a heart attack,” noted the Journal, while “[p]erforming heavy physical activity in a highly emotional state more than tripled the risk.”

“The researchers compared people’s behavior in the 60 minutes before the onset of heart-attack symptoms with the same one-hour period 24 hours earlier.”

The study by the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, involved some 12,000 patients “who were examined and interviewed at 262 health centers around the world as part of a larger study,” reported the Journal, noting that previous studies with smaller sample sizes had previously found a correlation between intense emotion and heart attacks.

That said, as usual, this new study should probably be taken with a grain of salt. “[T]he timing and intensity of anger and exercise were self-reported” by patients in the survey, the Journal said.