How Your Personality Is Silently Causing Inflammation (And Making You Sick)

1. JMJenna Macciochi0:00

   These five major personality types, so they are kind of roughly divided into, like, openness to experience, conscientiousness, extrovertedness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. So in psychology terms, they're kind of ways that we can be categorized based on our personality. Um, and each of these personality types have specific immunological features, and one of the most interesting thing is that, um, some of them are more likely to be pro-inflammatory and have higher levels of C-reactive protein, which is a marker in the blood for, for inflammation. Um, and things like being neurotic and, um, being, uh, sort of less introverted, it can affect the inflammation in our body. It's because I guess we're all very different. We're all on a sort of spectrum of different personalities, but that's evolved from maybe different roles you might play within a community, um, and then what your exposure to different infections might be or your risk of getting injured. Um, things like anger is known to prime the body for, um, for becoming damaged because maybe anger preceded violence, and throughout our evolution, we've like, "Okay, if you're angry, something might happen that might damage you, so we need to prime parts of our immune system to prepare for that."

2. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:22

   Yes. You mention anger, and it's something I wrote about, I feel, about in five, is the importance of forgiveness.

3. JMJenna Macciochi1:26

   Mm-hmm.

4. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:27

   There is good research on forgiveness.

5. JMJenna Macciochi1:29

   Yeah.

6. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:29

   A guy called Fred Luskin's done the Stanford University, I think, forgiveness trial or research. The... I can't remember the exact name.

7. JMJenna Macciochi1:36

   Yeah.

8. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:37

   His research is incredible, and I, I shared in my last book a story about one of my patients who had high blood pressure, and which again, you know, to, to, to make it relevant to our conversation, you know, high blood pressure is a chronic-

9. JMJenna Macciochi1:53

   Mm-hmm

10. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:53

    ... non-communicable illness that, you know, will have chronic inflammation-

11. JMJenna Macciochi1:57

    Yeah

12. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:57

    ... playing a role-

13. JMJenna Macciochi1:59

    Yeah

14. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:59

    ... in some way. And you know what? She had changed her lifestyle. I was... You know, I was doing the stuff I try and, uh, talk about, food and movement and sleep. You know what? It wasn't budging.

15. JMJenna Macciochi2:10

    Mm-hmm.

16. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:11

    And it was to do with, um, you know, basically her, um, her husband of many years had cheated on her-

17. JMJenna Macciochi2:19

    Yeah

18. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:19

    ... and they had split up, and it was only once she started practicing forgiveness-

19. JMJenna Macciochi2:25

    Mm-hmm

20. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:26

    ... right, that her blood pressure started going down. It-

21. JMJenna Macciochi2:30

    Oh

22. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:30

    ... it was incredible, and so and that's a, like, that's an anecdotal story from my clinic.

23. JMJenna Macciochi2:35

    Yeah.

24. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:35

    But, uh, it really... I think it does stand, uh, firm-

25. JMJenna Macciochi2:41

    Mm-hmm

26. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:42

    ... and consistent with the research that is out there in terms of if you're holding onto resentment-

27. JMJenna Macciochi2:46

    Yeah

28. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:46

    ... and anger, that will influence your biology-

29. JMJenna Macciochi2:50

    Yeah

30. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:50

    ... and your immune system.

Episode duration: 20:58