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Why you should not be mad when woundedWounds don't heal if one is angry: Study25 February, 2008 While it is widely believed that giving vent to one's anger is good for health, a new study has revealed that controlling anger might speed up the healing process, especially after surgery. The study conducted in the United States, appearing in the March 2008 issue of Brain Behavior and Immunity, suggests that stress has a major impact on the body's capability to repair itself. Researchers at Ohio State University, the United States, asked 100 participants in the study to rate how well they could control their temper. The researchers gave the participants blisters on one of their arms and then monitored how the wound healed over the course of 8 days. The speed at which they recovered from a blister was monitored. It came to light that those who lost their temper easily were more than four times likely to take over four days to heal than their mild-mannered counterparts. The subjects were asked to fill in a questionnaire, which looked at how anger was expressed – whether externally (by shouting at others, for example) or internally (when one rages insides, but keeps a cool exterior). They were also asked to judge their general ability to manage their anger. Whether one directed one's anger externally or internally was found to have no influence on recovery. What was important was how much control the individual was able to exert over his feelings. Those with low ability to control anger produced higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which was in turn, linked with delayed healing. Jean-Philippe Gouin, lead researcher, wrote in Brain Behavior and Immunity,“Such stress-induced delays in healing could increase the susceptibility to infection at the wound site, a process that fuels further decrease in the speed of repair." The research team sought to ensure that the connection between anger control and healing was not explained by other health factors by taking into account the participants’ sleep, amount of physical activity and alcohol consumption. The findings by the researchers at Ohio State University agree with other studies conducted in the field of stress and recovery. One such study had found that women taking care of spouse or a parent with dementia took on average 24% longer to heal a wound than a control group. Another study had showed hat even marital quarrels could reduce the speed of recovery from even a simple wound.
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