Your health depends on your personality type

Many are the scientific authors and researchers who claim that personality type directly or indirectly affects our physical health.

There are different ways of being of each one that increase or decrease the probability of suffering some type of disease, but the origin or cure is not only in the mind.

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Can each individual's personality influence their health?

Some people maintain admirable steadiness and strength in the face of exceptionally tough situations, with all factors working against them. On the other hand, we find individuals who, even having everything in their favor, are prone to suffering from health problems.

We can cite some of the most emblematic characters of our era to highlight the type of personality of each one and how they faced those moments of physical exhaustion.

1. Muhammad Ali

The most famous fighter of all time was stripped of his first title in 1966 and banned from the ring for three years for refusing to participate in the Vietnam War.

But his fighter and persevering personality made him champion two more times, earning him the nickname "The Greatest of All Time" (the greatest of all time).

2. Nelson Mandela

Former South African President spent more than 30 years in prison with more severe restrictions than ordinary prisoners, forced to break stone, deprived of visits and communication by ordinary mail. Mandela maintained a very positive attitude that led him to be president of his country and Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

The link between the way of being and physical well-being

Already in antiquity, the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen classified human beings in four psychological types, each of them susceptible to specific health problems.

For example, angry people, according to ancient medicine, are usually self-reliant and ambitious, and that means they are prone to heart problems or lose weight / gain weight easily.

More than two thousand years have passed since those first pioneering investigations between temperament and health.

Expert scientists continue to look for correlations between personality traits and disease types, and thus elaborate hypothesis to be able to conclude if these associations are due to a common biological basis or because a factor is the cause of the other. Perio... Can it be said that our personality affects our health?

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A study conducted at the University of North Carolina (USA) by Janice Williams sheds light on the role that anger plays in health. For five years he followed a group of people and observed that those who were irritable, cynical and hostile were more likely to suffer from cardiovascular deficiencies.

One of the conclusions that the researchers made was that personality influenced day-to-day habits. For example, the consumption of alcohol, tobacco or drugs was more common among the most impulsive and aggressive individuals.

However, once the data was analyzed in detail, it was concluded that the connection between personality and character is relatively complex. In fact, among people whose bad habits were equal, the ill health of the cholerics was more pronounced.

On the other hand, Laura Kubzansky, a professor at Harvard University, has carried out several investigations on the tendency to optimism or pessimism and its connection with physical health. His conclusion is very forceful: negativity is bad for health. The data collected from her studies based on observing collectives for decades show that people who perceive their future in shadows are more prone to illness, regardless of the material conditions of life and purchasing power.

The cardiovascular system it is a fundamental element when it comes to studying the different types of personality.

In the late 20th century, Meyer Friedman and Ray H. Rosenman intuited that there could be a correlation between heart risk and certain behavior patterns. The people most prone to heart attack were stressed and impatient individuals (type A personality).

Why are these types of people at higher heart risk? Again, there is no single cause. The neurologist Redford Williams unifies two possibilities in his theories: individuals with type A biochemistry, added to poor routine, are more likely to suffer a heart attack. According to Williams, people with this profile constantly secrete stress hormones like cortisol, and your blood pressure and heart rate go up often.

But do not fall into the trap. Susan Sontag, writer of the book The Disease and Her Metaphors, tells us about the headaches caused by simplistic theories who interpret the mental as a superpower capable of controlling everything.

Many self-help books and writings are based on unscientific data, a fact that has popularized the idea that diseases are nothing more than a manifestation of problems with the spirit.

Thus, much pseudoscience-based literature insists that there is a connection between less assertive personality and illness. Sontag remembers the danger of the sacralization of the mental:If we think that the psychic can control everything and that it is above matter, we will continually feel frustrated and overwhelmed.

Taking for granted that the spirit completely dominates the world is a waste of time and efforts, since the influence of the psychic on the physical is often diffuse and difficult to control.

Of course we have to take care of the way we think, but we must accept that percentage of chance and contingency that is so difficult to overcome today.