How anger and emotions affect your health

More and more, we are giving importance to the relation that exists between what we feel and our health states.  For some, this is nothing new knowing that anger and fear, for example, are two of the emotions that generate practically all ills or conditions that a human can suffer from.  However, for a lot of people this is still a little bit complicated to understand how emotions influence health.  This is due to the fact that as children, we get used to cures and remedies for what was hurting us “outside”, be it either a medication, a syrup, a pill, etc.

The TV is full of advertisements that promote a long list of wonder products to solve anything from being overweight, to gastritis, heart problems, etc.  Whenever we’re sick, we want a quick cure.  Going to the pharmacy to buy remedies for this or that, is undoubtedly always a very comfortable and practical alternative.  We are used to going to the doctor so they can tell us what we have, and we discard the possibility of curing ourselves because we don’t believe that we have that healing power… No one told us how!

And yet, the body can cure itself from practically any condition.  The only problem is that we deny the idea, we don’t think we can do it, and the less we believe, the more dependent we become on medications and doctors.

Why are we still sick if our cells regenerate and renew themselves completely in just a few days (including the bones)?  If we are new beings every certain amount of time, why aren’t we healed?  What is it that keeps the illness “stuck to us”?  To cure oneself, beginning to understand how our emotions influence our state of health is absolutely indispensable.

What are emotions?

Emotions are reactions that take place in our body before different experiences that we live: sadness, fear, loneliness, anxiety, happiness, anger, etc., are a few of the ways we have to responding to what happens.

A lot of people believe that feeling hate or being violent, or having feelings of fear or anxiety, is bad.  But in reality, no emotion is bad.  All emotions are just reflections of the way we see and understand the world.

Emotions and the body

The body is like a sponge: beyond absorbing nutrients and energy from foods, it is also very susceptible to storing how we feel in life.  Anger is an emotion of resistance and control.  It can manifest in several ways: when we are intolerant, desperate, when we have feelings of violence or vengeance.  To go no further, biologically we can feel the effects evident of emotions in our bodies, if we observe ourselves.

Anger’s effects in the body

When we are angry:

• The entire body tenses up.
• Blood circulation grows slower.
• The muscles and joints get stiff.
• Balance of the cardiovascular, hormonal, and nervous system is altered and broken.
• Blood pressure becomes imbalanced and there is an uncontrolled increase in cardiac rhythm and testosterone.
• Brain activity is altered, especially the frontal and temporal lobes, in a negative way.
• Bile spills out in the body, the blood is sent to the periphery, leaving the important organs without blood.

If we were to imagine all of these effects happening once, twice, three, or more times a day, if we were to imagine that these effects are in our bodies for one week, two weeks, 10 years, 40 years… How would the body feel after suffering this severe internal wear and tear?  And we haven’t even added the symptoms produced by fear or tension, for example, that although they are very similar to the effects of rage, they are a lot more accentuated.

The truth is, getting angry or feeling feel, anxiety, etc., is not bad.  The problem is that since we don’t know what to do with how we feel, a lot of times, we repress the anger, the rage, or we mask it or hide it, as well as with fear and tension.

But the body does not lie.  The body reflects, sooner or later, everything that we have felt inside: if you have been tense, for example, or you have frequently wanted to control situations or people, it is quite likely then that your joints, for example, will suffer from hardening and pain.  They are tired and exhausted from being under severe tension!  Also, if the emotions that dominate your life are, for example, uncertainty or fear, it is quite likely that you will suffer from gastritis or stomach or intestinal problems, or it could degenerate into eye or nervous problems.  Deception or disappointment, on the other hand, can degenerate into diabetes or lupus, or anemia, and even severe infections.

Tension and exhaustion from feeling life, if stored as tiny rocks in our body’s storehouse.  Even those emotions that we think were forgotten some time ago, a lot of times are still there, creating tension  and emotional pain in our lives.

That’s why it is important to understand what we feel.  A lot of times we live so hurriedly that we don’t give ourselves time to assimilate what we feel and live.  We avoid those important messages that our emotions want to give us.  The only thin they want to bring us, is that we recognize and better understand as human beings.

If you feel you’re always angry, or you frequently get disappointed, if you have anxiety or nerve problems, you could begin by practicing some sort of activity to help you channel this emotional energy.  Yoga and Tai chi are especially effective activities, as well as kick boxing, which is very good for releasing anger.

A lot of times, just venting an emotion isn’t enough.  You must read literature that gives you feed back and that makes you feel better; literature that gives you new perspectives on life, so you know and feel more free and confident in yourself, and with others.

Revised by: Dra. Loredana Lunadei on 09/26/2014

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