Try to stay calm if you have heart disease

Filed in archive Studies on July 22, 2005

Younger patients with heart disease died more frequently if they had an antagonistic or hostile personality:

In a study of more than 1,300 men and women with diseased heart arteries, researchers found that younger patients with an antagonistic personality had a higher risk of dying over the next 14 years than did their more mellow peers . . .

. . . It's not surprising that hostility might have different health effects at different ages, said Dr. Stephen H. Boyle, the study's lead author.

A possible explanation, he told Reuters Health, is that heart patients who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of their own hostility, which include blood pressure spikes and stress hormone surges, often don't make it to old age.

(Norton, "Hostility may speed death from heart disease", Reuters, Jul.22)