LONDON: Men who suppress their anger about unfair treatment at work are two to five times more likely to suffer a heart attack or die from heart disease than those who vent their frustration quickly, a Swedish study showed.
The results from the survey involving 2,755 men confirmed previous findings from the Framingham study in the United States and show that bottling up anger and frustration may harm the heart.
Scientists have long speculated that anger or arousal that "boils under the surface" may cause physical reactions like high blood pressure and related ailments the researchers said.
For the study, they enrolled healthy Swedish men with an average age of 41 from 1992 - 1995 then tracked them for a decade to compare a range of work and health factors.
The analysis found those who often relied on "covert coping", where they walked away or ignored unfair treatment often paid the price in terms of their health.
The results appeared in the Journal Of Epidemiology And Community Health.
"It's not good to go away and just leave the conflict if you feel you have been badly treated," Dr Constanze Leineweber, lead researcher from the Stress Research Institute at Stockholm University, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
The risk of heart attack and death was double among men who reported holding back their feelings, developing physical symptoms such as headaches or stomachaches, the study found.
When they homed in on men who often walked away or let things pass without saying anything the heart risks rose nearly fivefold, the researchers said.
They were unable to identify the best way to respond, as they observed similar rates of heart complications among men who said they yelled, protested against their treatment directly, talked to the offender right away or addressed the problem after the situation had calmed down.
More rigorous studies are needed to determine if suppressed anger does increase heart risk, the researchers said.
If the finding is confirmed, a more active approach to confronting unfair treatment may reduce rates of heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide, they said. BLOOMBERG