The blue neck (Neelkanth) of Lord Shiva represents that one should neither take the vices (slow poison), negative emotions out nor suppress them but alter or modify them.

The blue colour indicates slow poison or the negative thoughts. The same in the neck indicates that the poison is neither to be drunk nor to be spitted out but to be kept in the throat temporarily so that it can be neutralized at appropriate time.

Suppressed anger will release chemicals leading to illnesses like acidity, asthma, angina and diarrhea etc. Similarly, the expressed anger will end up into social unhealthiness and future heart disease.

The only way is to mange anger, taking the right and not the convenient action, neutralizing the anger by willful cultivation of opposite positive thoughts. For example the process of silently passing on love to any individual can take away the angry thoughts from the mind (love is opposite of anger).

A high level of anger has a powerful effect on the incidence of preventable cardiovascular death. Anger evokes physiological responses that are potentially life threatening in the setting of CAD. Emotional stress, anger, or worries have a dominant influence on the severity, frequency, and treatment of angina.

The message by Shiva was given in our Vedic knowledge and in different Upanishads. The scientists today are only validating those concepts by way of studied all over the world. And unless the messages come to us from the west we do not believe them.

In the modern contest angina is characterized by episodic variations in the frequency and severity of symptoms coincident with periods of emotional stress. When angina is associated with stress or anger, the angina is not usually a result of progressive coronary disease, but rather is due to an increase in oxygen demand.

Appreciation of this concept will help to rule out “true” unstable angina due to progressive coronary disease from recurrent angina that results from an increase in oxygen demand related to emotional stress. The former requires aggressive medical or surgical therapy; the latter, a demand-induced angina, responds to beta-adrenergic blockade, a tranquilizer and to stress reducing methodologies.

Anger has many phases. Anger Expression Inventory, assesses anger frequency (trait anger), anger intensity, anger expression (anger-out), anger suppression (anger-in) and anger recall. Both anger-in and anger-out are associated with heart blockades.

Dr. C. Noel Bairey Merz, from Women’s Health at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has shown that anger and hostility alone are not predictive for coronary artery disease in women, but women who outwardly express anger (anger-out) are at increased risk especially if they also have other risk factors: age, diabetes and high cholesterol levels. He said the overt expression of anger toward other persons or objects is the most “toxic” aspect of hostility in women. The findings are a part of Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) Study, a multi-center, long-term investigation sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Anger-in is also related to severity of blockages. Dr. Dembroski and group have shown that potential for Hostility and Anger-In are significantly and positively associated with the heart blockages disease severity, including angina symptoms and number of heart attacks. Suppressed anger is also associated with increased carotid arterial stiffness in older adults, a condition making them prone to future heart attacks and paralysis. In univariate correlational analysis by Anderson DE and group from National Institute on Aging, Baltimore, Maryland, a significant positive association of anger-in with stiffness was observed (P < .01), together with a less significant association of anger-in with carotid artery IMT (P < .05). Neither anger-out nor trait anger was significantly associated with carotid artery IMT or stiffness.

Suppressed anger has also been shown to increase blood pressure by Thomas and group from University of Tennessee.

Suppressed anger is further dangerous as the recall of anger now has been shown by Dr Jain and group fromYaleUniversityto be associated with angina, heartLVdysfunction and rise in upper blood pressure.

Ironson and group from Department of Psychology,University of Miamihas shown that anger recall produces more stress than the actual stress in a treadmill. In most studies psychological stressors used are mental arithmetic, recall of an incident that elicited anger, giving a short speech defending oneself against a charge of shoplifting.

They also showed that intensity of anger is associated with severity of angina. In their study vasoconstriction only occurred with high levels of anger. There also showed that there was no narrowing of non-narrowed arteries indicating that anger recall produce coronary vasoconstriction in previously narrowed coronary arteries.

1. Journal of Women’s Health, Published Online Dec. 2006, “Anger, Hostility, and Cardiac Symptoms in Women with Suspected Coronary Artery Disease: The Women’s Ischemia Syndrome Evaluation (WISE) Study”
2. Components of Type A, hostility, and anger-in: relationship to angiographic findings. Dembroski TM, MacDougall JM, Williams RB, Haney TL, Blumenthal JA. Psychosom Med. 1985 May-Jun; 47(3): 219-33
3. AndersonDE, Metter EJ, Hougaku H, Najjar SS. Am J Hypertens. 2006 Nov;19(11):1129-34
4. Women’s anger: relationship of suppression to blood pressure. Thomas SP. Nurs Res. 1997 Nov-Dec;46(6):324-30
5. Day-to-day reproducibility of mental stress-induced abnormal left ventricular function response in patients with coronary artery disease and its relationship to autonomic activation. Jain D, Joska T, Lee FA, Burg M, Lampert R, Zaret BL. J Nucl Cardiol. 2001 May-Jun;8(3): 347-55
6. Effects of anger on left ventricular ejection fraction in coronary artery disease. Ironson G, Taylor CB, Boltwood M, Bartzokis T, Dennis C, Chesney M, Spitzer S, Segall GM. Am J Cardiol. 1992 Aug 1;70(3):281-5