While hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, it seems the female heart can handle the hostility. A new study presented at the American Heart Association meeting suggests that hostile women, unlike men, don’t suffer cardiac repercussions:
The findings are based on a population study of more than 3,000 adults in Nova Scotia, Canada, all of whom were selected at random…
Known risk factors for heart disease were assessed in this group, including age, smoking habit, exercise, cholesterol levels, family history, weight, and diabetes.
Their personality type was also assessed, looking in particular at their levels of hostility. This is a key component of type A personality, which has been linked to increased risk of poor heart health.
After taking account of other influential factors, men with high hostility scores were twice as likely to have recurrent episodes of poor heart health as men with low hostility scores.
But there was no difference among the women, irrespective of their hostility scores.
We thought that these personality-based correlations of heart disease, and even the term “Type A” personality, had gone out of vogue, but there’s still some investigation on this subject. Now that we don’t have to lecture our female patients on letting go of the hate, we can focus on tangible things like smoking cessation and cholesterol.
More background info from the authors, at APA online…