Most people agree that emotional stress is a big factor in causing high blood pressure. But exactly how big part is it and how does emotional stress contribute to this deadly disease?

Even more importantly, what can you do about it if you live a stressful life? Not everyone can, or wants to, retreat to meditation in the Himalayas.

And then we have the opposite as well. High blood pressure can physically CAUSE stress and emotional distress. This is a symptom that most people and doctors are not aware of.

Sometimes I feel like it’s a long-lasting fad to be angry and reactive. We get irritated at the politician as well as the customer service rep. And we let people know that we’re outraged. If we can’t tell the person to his or her face, we vent with friends telling them exactly our opinion about whomever.

And for a good reason, you may say. There are lots of offensive, ineffective, corrupt, incompetent people in this world. And when they mess up, we suffer. And we can’t just let those people walk all over us.

Furthermore, interesting studies have shown that angry an customer often gets better results than someone who delivers the complaint with a smile or in a more polite way. So yes, getting upset can actually be beneficial.

But at what cost?

Anger is an emotion designed by nature to help you fight off very dangerous predators. Anger can also be used to flee, although it’s more of a fighting element.

When one is angry, loads of stress hormones are released. This makes the heart pump with increased intensity and the blood pressure skyrockets. Blood is transferred from the intestines to the skeletal muscles (this shuts off the digestive system).

The rational thinking parts of the brain are also pretty much shut off (don’t need to think when you’re fighting for your life, only react). Sometimes people become almost unconscious as the expression “seeing red” describes.

How much your body functions change depends on how angry you get.

So becoming angry in the right situation is not really the problem. The problem arises when we overuse the anger mechanism and boil over.

You see, since the fight of life and death usually doesn’t take long in nature (either you’re killed and eaten or the predator retreats pretty quickly), anger is only meant to last for a few minutes and not to be used very often.

Being irate several times per day (even if we’re not furious), parts of the physical symptoms of anger are always at play in our system. The digestive system isn’t getting enough blood, causing digestion problems like IBS and acid reflux. The rational part of the brain is stifled so we don’t think as clearly and maybe sometimes feel a little fatigued.

Health wise, the worst part is constant flares of stress hormones being released, causing high blood pressure. Because it takes up to 24 hours to get rid of some of those stress hormones, you’re constantly affected even after the anger wears off.

This Causes Chronic High Blood Pressure – Hypertension!

[adrotate group=”5″]So what can you do? If you don’t get angry, people will just walk all over you, won’t they?

The fact is, being firm, assertive and persistent can be just as effective- even more effective- than getting angry. Anger is often produced out of perceived impotence – out of feeling like we can’t do anything about the situation. Being firm doesn’t mean you react. You may have to state your reality a few times before you get results, but you’ll get the results.

The key is not what happens outside of your space but more what’s going on inside. You can say “I’m irate” to a person but be laughing inside. It’s the reaction part that brings the blood pressure up, not necessarily what you do. The smart person keeps his/her cool and uses his/her head. When we get angry we don’t have access to that head to think. On the other side, acting happy or not angry when fuming inside can be even worse than letting it all flare out for a moment and then have it over with.

As a famous prayer from the great 12-step programs goes “God give me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” When we’re angry we only have the courage but lose the other two.

Old Zen Story:

A teenage girl gets pregnant and has a son. The father of the daughter presses her to tell who the child’s father is. Not wanting to tell the truth, the daughter in desperation points to a Zen monk sitting on the street. The father, in a rage, brings the child to the monk and tells him that he’s the father of the child and must deal with it. The only response from the monk was “Is that so?”

Two years pass and every day the daughter sees the monk with her child sitting on the street. Finally her guilt gets the better of her and she tells her father the truth. Shameful, the father goes to the monk and tells him he’s taking the child back since the monk is not the father. The only response from the monk was, “Is that so?”

When I talk about how harmful emotional reactions are to health, people usually agree with me but at the same time tell me it’s hard to control this. Emotions and reactions flare up automatically. And it’s true. This is truly a big task to handle; maybe almost impossible to master.

But as with most changes, it’s more about habit than anything else. Our society admires reaction. Every newscast and talk show features people who’re expressing their anger about whatever the subject is. They’re furious and they express it.

Being calm and looking at the bright side is considered dull and not big news. If you care about your blood pressure, I recommend you assert yourself in belonging to the dull group.

Now Lets Flip the Coin to the Other Side…

The door swings both ways. Just as emotional stress causes high blood pressure, having high blood pressure can create symptoms of emotional stress.

Once chronic high blood pressure has developed (and there can be several reasons why this happens), the constant pressure causes stress (pressure) on the arteries. The body takes this as being under an attack of some sort and releases stress hormones.

Haven’t you at some point felt anxiety or stress even if there really wasn’t anything to be stressed about? You just felt restless and couldn’t concentrate. This may very well have been because for some reason there was an overload of stress hormones or other hormones in your system.

Feeling anxious and stressed for no good reason is like a beginning of a disorder of some sort or another (even if everyone experiences this once in a while). So instead of accepting mental instability, our brains unconsciously begin to look for a reason for this feeling. And either from obvious evidence or minor clues, the brain picks out reasons and formulates theories.

So today we think we’re stressed because of something that most days wouldn’t bother us at all. When the real reason is the high blood pressure that’s overloading our system.

We then react with emotions, which again raises our blood pressure, which causes more stress. And a vicious health circle has been created.

This process is, of course, much most subtle than can be explained in a few paragraphs and can take years to develop but you get the big picture.

So How Do We Deal With This And Lower the Blood Pressure?

To drop the blood pressure we have to break the vicious health circle that has been developing. We have to kind of reboot our system. I call this taking a “Focused Break.”

We do this using simple exercises that reduce the amount of stress hormones your body releases. They calm the nerve system and call a “time out” for various organs that are adding to the high blood pressure. For a few minutes, the blood pressure then drops significantly.

This now reduces the stress causing the high blood pressure, which again lowers the blood pressure. The vicious health circle has been reversed.

This may sound kind of complicated but we’ve simplified this into three easy exercises that anyone can do by following step-by-step audio directions.

Learn more about the high blood pressure exercises here…

I’ve used anger a lot as an example in this article. High blood pressure and other health issues can, however, be caused by any kind of overload of reactive feelings such as fear, anxiety, guilt, etc.

A happy, joyful attitude releases happy, joyful hormones, which contribute to a healthy, strong body and soul. Let’s not sweat the small stuff because it’s all small in the big scheme of things.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Please leave your comments below.