If you’ve ever snapped over something dumb, a slow driver, a passive-aggressive email, your phone dying at four percent, you’re a normal human. You’re also probably tired. And a new study adds another possibility. Cardio fitness might change how sharply stress spikes your anxiety and anger.
Researchers at Brazil’s Federal University of Goiás brought 40 healthy adults ages 18 to 40 into a lab for two visits. In one session, participants viewed neutral images. In the other, they viewed unpleasant images for about 30 minutes, including violence and accident-related content. The researchers measured anxiety and anger right before and right after each session using established psychological scales.
They also estimated cardiorespiratory fitness using predicted VO₂max, calculated from self-reported exercise habits along with age, sex, and body size. Then they split people into two fitness groups: above-average and below-average.
Now for the number that really stood out. In the unpleasant-image session, the below-average fitness group had an odds ratio of 8.754 for jumping from moderate to high anxiety compared to the above-average group. StudyFinds summarized that as a 775 percent higher risk. The math wording is clunky, but the point is simple. Lower fitness meant a much steeper anxiety jump during emotional stress.
The researchers saw a similar effect with anger. Lower-fitness participants had larger jumps in state anger after the unpleasant images. They also measured “anger-out,” a trait describing outward anger expression. Higher predicted VO₂max correlated with smaller anger changes during stress, even after personality factors were controlled for.
The study also checked the “everyday anxiety” side of things. Higher predicted fitness correlated with lower trait anxiety overall.
Now for the fine print. This was a small study. Fitness was estimated, not measured on a treadmill with a mask and fancy technology. The stressor was curated images, not your actual day, where stress throws curveballs. Still, the results fit a commonsense idea. Regular aerobic exercise trains the body to handle physical strain. That training can carry over when your nervous system deals with emotional strain.
The authors wrote that “Regular physical exercise can be a useful non-pharmacological strategy for anger management.”
If your fuse has been short, try the boring fix. Walk briskly. Ride a bike. Swim. Do something that gets your heart rate up, and you can repeat. No grand transformation required, just a little more capacity for the stuff that would normally send you over the edge.
The post You’re 775% More Likely to Let Stress Wreck You If You’re Out of Shape, Study Finds appeared first on VICE.
