Men who bottle up their anger at being unfairly treated at work are up to five times more likely to suffer a heart attack, or even die from one, than those who let their frustration¹ show, a Swedish study has found.

瑞典一项研究发现，在工作中受到不公正待遇时忍气吞声的男性职员患心脏病或死于该疾病的几率比公开表达不满的人高五倍。

An image of a man who is angry with his colleague. Men who bottle up their anger at being unfairly treated at work are up to five times more likely to suffer a heart attack, a Swedish study has found.

The study by the Stress Research Institute of Stockholm University followed 2,755 employed men who had not suffered any heart attacks from 1992 to 2003.

At the end of the study, 47 participants had either suffered an attack, or died from heart disease, and many of those had been found to be "covertly³（偷偷摸摸地） coping" with unfair treatment at work.

"After adjustment for age, socioeconomic（社会经济的） factors, risk behaviors, job strain and biological risk factors at baseline, there was a close-response relationship between covert² coping and the risk of incident myocardial infarction（心肌梗塞） or cardiac death," the study's authors wrote.

Covert coping was listed as "letting thing pass without saying anything" and "going away" despite feelings of being hard done by colleagues or bosses.

Men who often used these coping techniques had a two to fivefold（五重的，五倍的） higher risk of developing heart disease than those who were more confrontational⁴（面对面的，对抗的） at work, the study showed.

The researchers said they could not answer the question of what might be a particularly healthy coping strategy at work, but listed open coping behavior when experiencing unfair treatment or facing a conflict as "protesting directly," "talking to the person right away," "yelling at the person right away" or "speaking to the person later when things have calmed down."

The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.