How Negative Emotions Affect Your Health

Negative emotions not only affect your mental well-being but also your physical health. Discover how chiropractic care in Mataró can help you maintain emotional and physical balance.

NEGATIVE EMOTIONS AFFECT YOUR HEALTH

Did you know that any negative and positive sensation or emotion affects a specific part of your body?

Although positive emotions like gratitude have been scientifically linked to various benefits, negative emotions and stress can wreak havoc—especially if you don’t exercise or eat well, as both can alleviate pessimism and keep stress under control.

It is curious that certain emotions are related to pain in specific regions of the body, although science cannot exactly explain why. For example, people who suffer from depression often experience chest pain, even when their heart is not physically ill.

Similarly, the feeling of extreme grief can have a devastating impact, and research confirms that in the days following the loss of a loved one, the risk of having a heart attack increases 21 times.

Although much remains to be discovered about the exact mechanics of these mind-body links, it is known that your brain, and consequently your thoughts and emotions, play a distinct role when you experience physical pain and can contribute to the development of chronic diseases. As a result of these findings, various mind-body therapies have emerged that take into account this interrelation between your emotions and your physical health.

The Science of Anger

Let’s take an example where someone invades your lane while you’re driving and, in response, you get angry. When this happens, stress chemicals related to the fight or flight response are released, preparing your body for quick action. The biochemical torrent that occurs during an anger attack goes beyond…

The stress response begins in your brain. When your eyes or ears register a sudden threat (the car invading your lane), information is sent to the amygdala, a brain area that interprets both images and sounds and is involved in processing emotions.

By interpreting the scene and sounds as an imminent threat, your amygdala sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus, which is similar to a command center for your entire body.

It communicates with various parts of the body and organs through the autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for involuntary bodily functions like breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, dilation and constriction of blood vessels, etc.

Your autonomic nervous system has 2 “branches”—the sympathetic nervous system, which triggers the fight or flight response, and the parasympathetic, which promotes the “rest and digest” response that calms your body once it’s no longer in danger.

As the amygdala sends its distress signal, the hypothalamus activates the sympathetic nervous system, causing the adrenal glands to release adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) and noradrenaline (norepinephrine).

The sudden release of stress chemicals causes your heart rate and blood pressure to increase, which in turn makes you breathe more quickly. It also releases glucose and fats from body sites where they are stored, giving your body a quick energy boost.

Blood also flows to your extremities, including your face. This is why anger can literally make you blush.

This avalanche of events occurs so quickly that it’s already in full swing before the visual center of your brain has fully processed what is happening.

The Importance of Your Prefrontal Cortex

To maintain or regain emotional control, you need to activate your prefrontal cortex—the brain area that controls executive functions, such as complex cognitive and social behavior, as well as the expression of personality, willpower, decision-making, and judgment. Without the prefrontal cortex, you cannot have self-control or process logical thoughts.

As noted in a 2015 study examining how subliminal messages of anger affect your decision-making abilities, “the behavioral and physiological impact of anger states jeopardizes the efficiency of cognitive processing through ready-for-action changes in the autonomic response that distort neuronal and regional activity.”

The video presented is not about how to activate the prefrontal cortex, however, some scientifically proven ways that can strengthen this brain region and improve your self-control are:

• Maintaining a healthy diet with high-quality fats
• Getting enough quality sleep (most adults need to sleep 7 to 9 hours per night)
• Exercising regularly. To strengthen the prefrontal cortex, relaxation exercises like Tai Chi or yoga, as well as high-intensity training, will provide great benefits
• Managing your daily stress. Your prefrontal cortex begins to succumb when it is chronically overwhelmed by stress chemicals. By not allowing stress to become overwhelming…