Health - Your personality type could decide what makes you ill

From The Mail Online, an article that suggests personality type can determine the type(s) of illness(es) to which we are susceptible. This is rather long, but the whole thing is very interesting.

Your personality type could decide what makes you ill
By Roger Dobson

Personality types are the sort of subject you might glance at while flicking through a magazine in the GP's waiting room. Pretty frivolous stuff, you perhaps think.

However, new research suggests our personality traits are more significant than previously thought, and can play a key role in future health.

It's long been reported that people with socalled Type A personalities - hostile, highly competitive and impatient - are more prone to heart problems.

But now researchers are increasingly finding that a wider range of personalities and traits are linked to a host of medical problems, from stomach ulcers and viral infections to Parkinson's disease.

Could your personality make you ill? Probably, if this is making you worried!

When it comes to forming our personalities, it's increasingly accepted that early life experience plays a key role. Most human traits are also linked to genes, says Dr Dean Hamer of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, a world authority on the subject. For instance, neurotic behaviour is associated with the serotonin gene, or 5-HTTLPR.

Quite how personality then triggers increased vulnerability or resistance to disease is unknown, although there are various theories. Here we look at the personalities and their ailments - and what the scientists believe is going on.

Read the whole story.

According to the article and the research, if you are cheerful, you might actually die younger. I guess being grouchy is going to extend my life, thereby giving me more to be grouchy about.

One of the most surprising findings is that cheerful people are more likely to die early.

'Children who were rated by their parents and teachers as more cheerful, and as having a sense of humour, died earlier in adulthood than those who were less cheerful,' say University of California researchers. 'Contrary to expectation, cheerfulness and sense of humour were inversely related to longevity.'

One theory is that cheerful people underestimate life's dangers and may also be more likely to have difficulty coping when things don't go as anticipated.

Another personality trait, being anxious, raises stress hormones.

People with anxiety disorders are three times more likely to be treated for high blood pressure. A study from Northern Arizona University found stress hormones may be the reason.

Meanwhile, women with phobic anxieties, such as fear of heights, were at higher risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and cholesterol. Although behavioural differences - like a greater tendency to smoke among people with anxiety - go some way to explaining why this happens, they do not explain it all.

Here's something else to worry about: a University of Antwerp study found that within ten years of heart treatment, 27 per cent of anxious types were dead, compared to 7 per cent of others.

In general, it seems that it pays to be optimistic:

People who always look on the bright side live, on average, 7.5 years longer than those who take a gloomier view, according to work at the University of California.
And the risk of dying early from any disease is 55 per cent lower for optimists, say researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands who followed 1,000 people. One theory is that optimism may increase the will to live, while another is that greater sociability plays a role; these in turn may lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh say that optimism boosts the immune system and protects from psychological stress.
An American study showed that over a 30-year period, optimists had fewer disabilities and less chronic pain.

Tags: personality type, what makes you ill, health, psychology, emotions, Type A, Dean Hamer, disease, impulsive, cheerful, anxious, aggressive, shy, optimistic, tight-lipped, conscientious, neurotic, extrovert, pessimistic