I remember seeing in some old movies, when a mere Piper-kid, of some old guy getting angry about something and his wife cautioning him about his blood pressure. Implication was that if he didn’t bring his anger under control, it might raise his blood pressure.
Two questions:
Can anger/strong emotions increase blood pressure? Can emotions raise the blood pressure to a dangerous point?
Going the other way, can anger or irritability be a sign of high blood pressure? Haven’t seen that in a movie, but i’ve heard it, anecdotally. Any truth to that? Can blood pressure meds reduce irritability?
Emotions can definitely affect blood pressure. Some people get high BP readings in a doctor’s office because of nervousness, for instance. Stress also increases BP.
Usually it’s not an issue, but it could be if the BP is so high to cause a stroke.
OTOH, anger is not a sign of a high BP. The change is due to the anger, but you don’t get more angry if your BP is high.
When I was in school they taught us the two factor theory of emotion. This would imply that it is possible for high blood pressure to cause irritability. However, like much of what they taught us, there seems to be trouble replicating the classic studies.
Out of curiosity, I was wondering which movie the quote may be from, I found this “Henry, remember your blood pressure!” … not quite the scenario Piper describes
If you drop the Henry, it’s definitely a fairly common trope as it appears in a few books and TV episodes such as Entourage, Murder She Wrote, Batman - The Animated series, etc…
Here are the ones I could find, with Cinderella being the most “famous” I would guess…
It Happened One Night (1934)
On the Wagon (1935) - Starring Shemp Howard and Roscoe Ates
Cinderella (1950)
Palm Springs Weekend (1963)
The Flintstones - The Most Beautiful Baby in Bedrock (19 November 1964)
Somehow I find that hard to argue with, yet still has nothing to do with my post. I didn’t say high blood pressure was always symptomatic. I don’t see any reasonable argument that any illness which can produce undesirable symptoms could not lead to irritability.
Right. I see the reasoning now. If you have symptoms that make you irritable, that may feed back into a self-reinforcing cycle of irritation, raised BP, irritation… until something lets go and it’s not irritating any more.
I guess I’m glad I was asymptomatic. Or generally phlegmatic enough that very little irritates me.
I’m not even saying that irritation directly increases blood pressure, though as so many will say, “finding out my blood pressure is high is raising my blood pressure”. And while my blood pressure is still not really under control, but doing better, I doubt it had anything to do with my irritability, that just comes naturally. But if you have high blood pressure you might as well consider irritability to be a potential symptom of it.
Anxiety, anger, aerobic exercise and heavy lifting can all increase blood pressure temporarily.
As for point 2, I’m obviously not a doctor, but certain disorders (like an adrenal tumor or too much cortisol) could lead to both irritability and hypertension, but its more that both would be symptoms of the hormonal imbalance rather than the irritability being due to hypertension. At least as I understand it.
Can blood pressure meds reduce irritability? Some can. Some blood pressure meds work by repressing the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight or flight nervous system. Clonidine, beta blockers, alpha blockers, etc. all suppress the fight or flight mechanism in various ways, and all are used off label to treat anxiety even among people who are normotensive.
You missed the most important phrase in the second paragraph: “If you blood pressure is * extremely* high.” (Emphasis added).
Most people with HPB are not extremely high (again, read that first paragraph). Until you get to that point (which usually takes years even if untreated), there are no noticeable symptoms.
I know the word “cholesterol” has been around as a medical term since the 1890s, but was it in common parlance in 1964? I (born 1961) personally never heard the word until around 1975, and I’d watched a LOT of Flintstones up to that point…
The timing is about right as it coincides with the findings of the Framingham Heart Study and the Seven Countries Study which reported high blood cholesterol as a as a risk factor cardiovascular disease.
