Alternative Health Blog

Hey, guys, don’t get mad about it. After the Alternative Health Blog reported just last week that hostility and anger can lead to heart attacks, it turns out another piece of new research connects hostility or a “Type H” can lead men to put on extra weight.

It appears that being laid-back is not only sort of cool but healthy too. Men in the study who were less hostile and more even-tempered were less like to have high body mass index statistics. BMI is a ratio of height to weight.

The study was performed by French researchers and predicted weight gain for more than 6,400 angry and laid-back men and women over two decades. The volunteer subjects were from Great Britain, ranging in age from 35 to 55 at the beginning of the study. Subjects were tested for anger at the start, then measured for BMI at four different times over 19 years. 

Here’s an interesting twist. When those men and women were measured at the study’s start, there was a direct association between hostile personality and higher body weight among both men and women. Women’s hostility and weight gain remained consistent over the two decades (gaining some pounds) while men’s hostility was found to accelerate and compound weight gain. 

The authors, who published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, speculated that hostility as a characteristic might lead to less willingness to follow exercise and diet advice or can lead to depression symptoms that discourage positive health habits. Either way, loss of temper appears to lead to weight gain.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Heath Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.