The drive to work begins innocently enough, until the driver in the car ahead of you suddenly decides he is going to turn left at the last second, leaving you trapped and helpless at the intersection. Oooh, this guy’s really asking for it! Then you turn on the radio for consolation only to be walloped with five straight minutes of commercials. On every station!

You finally make it to work, only to find that the parking lot is under construction. Don’t worry, there’s other free parking available – and it’s only two blocks away! Of course, you forgot to bring your umbrella and it happens to be pouring out. You scour the backseat; no hat, no newspaper – not even a lunch box to cover your head! You spent all that time getting your hair to look just right and now you have to go through the whole day looking waterlogged and ridiculous.

You get the picture.

Without question, we live in a world that is fast-paced and stressful with a lot hanging in the balance. Even watching the nightly news can be an exercise in frustration. An older and wiser uncle of mine who arrived in Toronto during the carefree days of the ’50s recently told me that we used to turn the television on to laugh. Now it makes us cry.

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.”  – Buddha

But no matter how real or justified we imagine the stimuli to be, anger ultimately comes from within us. And we all have to deal with it on a minute-by-minute basis because life’s challenges never take a day off. Just remind yourself that you’re the one who is in the driver’s seat at all times. You control the steering and the speed. You also control the brake. Ease up on the gas, take a safe detour, and you’ll arrive there healthier and happier. This yellow-light approach should be applied to the big issues you face in life, and also the small ones that fill your daily routine. When you receive an upsetting e-mail, for example, you should wait before you respond. That way, you can take a step back and cool off, before you respond in a regretful way.

Anger can also act as a positive emotion that evokes change. Take protestors or politicians for instance. Whether as individuals or as part of a larger group, many have risen to achieve noble deeds and affect great personal or social change when driven by anger born from inequality or injustice.

Let’s take a look at what some famous thinkers have said about anger.

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.”  – Buddha

“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, U.S. poet, essayist and lecturer

“It takes two flints to make a fire.”  – Louisa May Alcott

“When angry, count to four. When very angry, swear.”  – Mark Twain

“A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.”  – Winston Churchill

“Speak when you’re angry – and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret.” – Laurence J. Peter, writer and educator

Have you ever wondered why some people get angrier than others? A new year marks new findings in the ambiguous area of anger.

University of Toronto sociology professor Scott Schieman contributes an important chapter in the International Handbook of Anger to determine the origins of anger. Schieman documents data collected from 1,000 Americans aged 18 and up over a span of 15 years. His focus was on key social patterns of anger across the most influential social statuses: gender, age and social class.

Below is a summary of Schieman’s findings from “The Sociological Study of Anger: Basic Social Patterns and Contexts,” published in the International Handbook of Anger.

Background
▶ Anger is one of the most frequently reported and recognized emotions.
▶  Anger is often an interpersonal event that involves negative appraisal of self or society.

Social Patterns of Anger
▶  An individual’s social position determines the “type, frequency, and intensity of emotions that will be directed toward him or her or aroused in him or her.”
▶  Age, gender and social class are the most influential factors.

Age and Anger
▶  Average levels of feeling annoyed, angry, yelling and losing temper diminish with increasing levels of age, especially after your 30s.

External Versus Internal Factors
▶  Most emotion-related experiences are linked to relationships in work or family (particularly in partner and parent-child relationships).
▶  Parents’ nagging and criticism evokes opposition and anger in children.

Gender and Anger
▶  Anger is more of an “acceptable emotion” for men rather than women because it is viewed as a masculine emotion linked with status and power.
▶  Women are conditioned not to display anger or risk being labelled “hostile,” “neurotic” or “unladylike.”
▶  Women think about their anger more and take longer to stop feeling angry.
▶  Women are more likely to suppress anger, while men are more likely to verbally or physical assault the target of their anger.

Social Class and Anger
▶  People with higher education, better income and work conditions tend to show lower levels of anger, yelling and losing their temper.
▶  Better-educated people are more proactive about dealing with the sources of their anger; economic hardships contribute to anger – as do feelings of being underpaid or unappreciated at work.

Immune system
Immunity is derived from the Latin word immunis, which means free, exempt from burden. In the body, the “burden” is disease and the role of the immune system is to maintain health, i.e: freedom from disease. On a daily basis, the body must defend against millions of pathogens, such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, worms, and toxins.

[View with PicLens]

There are a number of factors that affect the immune system. Below, you will find some of the most important lifestyle changes to support your immune system: nutrition, exercise and behavioural well-being.

Nutrition
Sugar
Sugar has been shown to decrease immunity and increase susceptibility to infection. Glucose and other simple sugars, such as fructose, sucrose, honey, and orange juice, have been shown to reduce the capacity of white blood cells to engulf (swallow) pathogenic bacteria. Starch, which is a complex form of carbohydrate, does not have the same effect. In acute infections, refined sugars should be avoided.

Protein
Protein deficiency may suppress the immune system and increase susceptibility to infections. Protein malnutrition is one of the four leading causes of disease in developing countries. Since the immune system of the elderly changes in response to age, the impact of protein and calorie malnutrition is more severe in seniors than in adults. Many elderly people have poor nutrition and subsequently, poor immune response, making them more susceptible to infections.

Fat
Excessive dietary intake of lipids, particularly omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, may depress the immune system and increase susceptibility to infection. Researchers have demonstrated that large doses of dietary fat impair certain immune cells and their immune functions.

Cholesterol
Elevated amounts of dietary cholesterol may increase susceptibility to infection.

Coffee
Studies have indicated that coffee depresses immunity. Coffee appears to suppress the immune response and reduce the proteins (immunoglobulins) that bind to pathogens.

Exercise
An active lifestyle and regular exercise improves immune function. Studies have shown that regular, moderate exercise leads to a positive effect on the immune system. Very intense and prolonged exercise, such as running a marathon, may actually increase the risk of developing an infection in the short term.

Behavioural Well-Being
Stress, mood and social support are at the top of the list with respect to well-being. Studies have shown that stress is a co-factor in the development of infection. Mood may enhance or down-regulate the immune system.  Humour may enhance the immune system, while loneliness and depression may do the opposite. A person’s social support network allows them to buffer the many stresses of daily living. Studies have shown that social support strengthens the immune system.

Bringing it all Together
In many of the lifestyle changes suggested above, these work best when combined together. Integration would be the best word for this. In order to support your immune system, you should integrate lifestyle changes related to nutrition, exercise and behavioural well-being.

Take body weight for example. Studies have shown that both excessive thinness and severe obesity are associated with impaired immune function.  In the obese person, the best strategy to lose weight would be to integrate lifestyle changes on nutrition, exercise and behavioural well-being. Incorporating a personalized, integrated program for healthy living is crucial to maintaining a healthy weight and pleasant lifestyle.

Dr. Jean-Jacques Dugoua, Ph.D. (Cand.), is a naturopathic doctor and director of naturopathic medicine and clinical pharmacology at Newtopia, a lifestyle company.

Dr. Michael Inzlicht is a psychologist specializing in stigma, self-control, and social neuroscience.

The atheistic advice gives the impression of a problem, solved. But a new study published in the scholarly journal Psychological Science, suggests you might want to try doing something else – have faith.

The joint research article, “Neural Markers of Religious Conviction,” shows that believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress. “The timing is certainly an accident,” says Michael Inzlicht, assistant professor of psychology at University of Toronto Scarborough, who assures his study has nothing to do with current global uncertainties. “My colleague wondered if religious people responded differently to threatening information, and I was more interested in self-control and how anxiety plays a part in that,” Inzlicht says. Whatever the researchers’ motives, their results show that a divine higher power can be healthier than none at all.

In two simple experiments, religious and non-religious people were invited into a laboratory to have their brain activities measured while performing tasks. “The more they believed in God, the less brain activity they showed when making errors,” Inzlicht says, suggesting that people are OK with their mistakes when they believe in a greater purpose. “Where there is uncertainty, some people can become paralyzed. But religion offers a blueprint of what the world means, and this can offer some relief for people.”

People who read the study will probably agree, the findings come at a relevant time. Aside from a financial crisis that will hopefully end in the near future, the planet has never been in worse ecological shape – at least not during our existence. And films like Bill Maher’s Religulous poke fun at almost every world religion. Of course ,the UK’s atheist bus campaign is the most relevant phenomena. While Inzlicht admits his research doesn’t say whether or not God exists, he does think the advertisement is funny, since his results show the exact opposite. “We found that for those people who believe in God, they’re the ones who don’t worry and just live their lives.”

Nonetheless, the study raises a multitude of questions that open up a whole new existential can of worms. Looking back throughout history, a person can’t help but wonder where religion came from in the first place. “I can theorize it sprung up to understand and explain the world, where nature was frightening and difficult to predict, but that has nothing to do with our study,” Inzlicht says. “Based on other research, I can definitely say people who are religious gain physical benefits and live longer.” In any case, despite the fact that everyone has a unique opinion about the existence of a supreme being, there’s one thing we should be able to agree on – faith is good for your health.
www.utoronto.ca