Transitioning into more personalized care is a big priority for patients and doctors currently, but could that mean getting down to the details like what you would report in a personality test? The fact that you’re an introvert or extrovert could actually be affecting your health.
As The New York Times reports, our personal characteristics and social behaviors might be directly connected to our physical well-being:
For a study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, Kavita Vedhara and her co-authors gave personality tests to 121 people, and tested their blood to analyze the expression of genes related to inflammation. They found that the personality trait of extroversion was associated with increased expression of genes promoting inflammation. Meanwhile, conscientiousness, which the authors define as a trait “reflecting planfulness, caution, and harm avoidance,” was associated with decreased expression of pro-inflammatory genes. Since inflammation can be part of the body’s response to infection, higher expression of pro-inflammatory genes can mean a more active immune system; lower expression can mean a relatively less active one.
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The authors explain that introverts could be essentially protecting themselves from infection by avoiding people and places. Extroverts could be exposing themselves to many more germs, which could in turn strengthen their immune system.
“If you’re confronted with a chronic condition” like diabetes or heart disease, Dr. Vedhara told Op-Talk, “you may well have underlying beliefs about your condition which influence how likely you are to engage with treatment, you might have an emotional response to that condition which might influence your underlying physiology and your ability to recover or to manage your disease, you may well have an orientation which makes you more or less likely to exercise” — and looking at all of those factors as well as the physical manifestations of the condition itself might help doctors treat it better.
“Most areas of medical intervention work quite well,” she said, “but I think that we’re on the brink of seeing a future where we use psychological interventions and behavioral interventions to maximize their efficacy.”
Now, you can decide after reading this if you’d rather go wash your hands or perhaps get on a busy city bus. Just go with your gut.
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[Photo from flickr user Thomas Hawk]