Exercise The Next Best Tool For Anger Management

Psychologists and doctors have long known that exercise can improve your mood, and many studies have supported this conclusion.  A new study suggests that exercise may have a special role to play in managing anger in men who are prone to strong anger responses.

The study used as its subjects college-aged men who were high in “trait anger,” meaning they have a general tendency to react angrily to situations.  Researchers tested these anger-prone men and their brain reactions and another physical marker of stress response called late positive potential as well as their own perceptions of angry feelings in response to videos that were designed to provoke an angry response.  The subjects were tested for anger responses both before and after a moderately intense exercise session that lasted 30 minutes.

The results suggest that exercising after becoming angry helped to dissipate the anger and that exercising before being in an anger-provoking situation help to reduce the intensity of the response.

In short:  exercise will not keep you from getting angry, but it can help you keep your anger under control and diminish the negative effects of anger.  Lead researcher Nathan Thom, a stress physiologist, says the study shows that “exercise really is like medicine” and that exercise can protect against anger “almost like taking aspirin to prevent a heart attack.”

Because the study used only male subjects of college age, future research will be necessary to see whether women or men of other age groups get the same benefits.  In addition, the study did not examine the effects of regular daily exercise, which could be different from the effects of a single exercise session.

In addition, the study does not explain how or why exercise protects against anger, so Dr. Thom recommends that future research should explore the mechanism of this effect.  Finally, Thom also recommends that future researchers should explore more fully the effects of exercise on how people express their anger in more realistic situations.

The research was presented last week at the 2010 meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.