Personality and Health

In today’s world, everyone is talking about good health, they say want to live long and die old but do they know how to take care of their health? The definition of health is “a state of complete physical, social and mental well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Definition of Wellness, n.d., p. 1). There are a lot of factors that can influence the health, one of them are personality. Personality is the quality of being a person, existence as a self- conscious human being. In psychology term personality is defined as the organized pattern of behavioral characteristics of the individual. Research shows that emotional are linked to health. Even in Chinese medicine, they believe that emotion have impact on an individual’s health. Personality can influence one’s health, making the individual to have cancer or illness. It also said that personality can make an illness better or worse. There are few type of personality, the first one is the extraversion and introversion plus one more that been recently found is the “ambiversion”. Extraversion are individuals who like to socialize with people, they are people who like to mixed around and dislike being alone. Due to having this personality they are able to mix with people around them in a short period of time. On the other hand is the introversion, it is the exact opposite of extraversion. The individuals are very quiet and less sociable, but they are not people who likes being alone or shy, they just like being with a smaller groups of people. These two are the extreme cases, ambiversion is located in the middle of the two types. Ambiversion individuals are people who can mix with crowds and still like the time being alone. They are considered the balance between extroversion and introversion.
When explaining an extroverted personality, it is use to describe a person who enjoys social gatherings, such as parties or group activities and like to go for outdoor activities (Kienlen, 2007). They are likely to enjoy spending time around people and found themselves energized by social interactions (Natural Hypnosis, 2012). Extroverted personality is not either inherited but it is a kind of collection of skills, beliefs or a behavior pattern (Natural Hypnosis, 2012). An extroverted person tends to be more confident than other people as he will never feel shy or nervous when talking to a group. We can prove this when they are talking in public, their way of speaking is so calm and so loud to make people convince to their ideas.
According to a research did on July 2009 issue of the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, specifically, extroverted personality traits may be connected to stress chemicals and the ability to withstand stress-related, inflammatory diseases (Kienlen, 2009). In this psychology research, extroverted personality traits were connected with dramatically lower levels of the inflammatory chemical interleukin 6 (IL-6). Increased of this chemical can contribute to clogged arteries, heart attacks and strokes. Conversely, people with introverted personality may have higher level of this chemical making them vulnerable to disease. So, we can say that extrovert have a lower levels of stress chemical which can keep them physically healthier.
Extroverts prefer intense workouts with groups of people, and are prone to exercising fairly often (Kienlen, 2011). Hence, extroverts might tend to be healthier because they like social gathering such as outdoor activities like playing football game or basketball. These activities require the communication and cooperation between team mates, so, extroverts will dominant to these activities as they are more talkative, can be friends and join in other groups immediately. Once they are in a group, they will always gather to play their sports game which can help them become more sporty, and reduce stress thus to be healthier. Extroverts also prefer to listen to music while exercising as it helps them achieve fitness goals (Kienlen, 2011). On the other hand, an extroverted personality may tend to be unhealthy because of socializing. It might be good that they know more friends but this increase the chances to have more social activities if they do not have the self-control. Some of them may likely to become the life of the party; they go for social networking sites like “clubbing” and claim that it is kind of socializing to help them get more friend and knowledge.
But in gradually, they may drinks alcohols which can make them liver tends to be malfunction. In some cases, some of them stay till late nights thus causing them having lack of sleep which can cause a lot of physical and mental problems. This caused them to have difficulty time to concentrate and solve problems. Intense social interactions are not always a good thing or a positive to do. It might lead extroverts to fatigue in brain regions and reduce the alertness (Fresh and Health, 2010). So, we can say that an extroverted personality might improve someone’s health but if not control in balance, it may lead to health problems especially the organ, liver which always get problems when lack of sleep and consuming too much of the alcohol.
So, I agree that extroverted can improve in someone’s health when everything go through is balance and never over some circumstances, but it needs the self-control of the extrovert otherwise it may leads to the opposite effects.
Many people assumed that an introvert is simply a person who is shy. In fact, introvert has nothing related to do by being shy. “Shyness has an element of apprehension, nervousness and anxiety, and while an introvert may also be shy, introversion itself is not shyness” (Bainbridge, 2012, p. 1). An introvert is a person who dislikes being around a big crowd of people and withdrawing from the society to become preoccupied with his or her own thoughts in psychology (Abhijit Naik, 2011). In layman’s term is a person who loves being alone and seldom thinks of others then himself. Peoples with an introvert personality, usually feel discomfort in a party like setting. For example, they are rarely seen socializing, participating group activities, concerts, crowded places, and do not like unexpected visitors. “Introverts process their emotions, thoughts, and observations internally” (Kienlen, 2007b, p. 1). Introverts are not entirely unsociable with people. They can be social people, but rather reveal less about themselves than extroverts do. Somehow or rather, introverts were labeled weird and rude by people (Walzer, 2011). The truth is, they prefer to concentrate on a single activity at a time and like to observe situations before they participate, especially observed in developing children and adolescents before choosing a worthy companion (Introversion, 1998). 60% of the gifted population is made up of introverts while about 25 to 40% of the general population (Gluon, 2009).
Introverts see health in a much more different manner than extroverts. They consider mental health is a physical health (Fenn, 2005). This is because; they do not like sports with direct aggression and exercising but tend to be quite and thoughtful. Introverts seems to like sports which requires them to concentrate, low in arousal levels, self-motivation, precision, and mostly individual performance (Teach PE, 2012). For example, golf, archery and snooker. These are not considered as a healthy sport to me but much more of a hobby. In other words, they tend to play less rough compared to extroverts where they required a degree of aggression in order to be interested. Introverts do not exercise to reduce stress because they typically enjoy relaxing at home or in nature where it is not a busy public areas where there are too much noise going on because their brain are too sensitive to the neurotransmitter called Dopamine (Walzer, 2011). Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps control the brain's reward and pleasure centres and also helps to regulate movement and emotional response (Psychology Today, 2012).
Studies have found that the characteristic introversion also carries negative effects with it. Comparing introverts to extroverts, their chances of having psychological and physiological health risk are higher (Helgoe, 2008). “For instance, a study by the University of North Carolina demonstrated that they run a significant higher risk of depressions than extroverts do” (Heyne, 2011). During holidays or special occasion, normal people go and find ways to enjoy with their family, friends, and hobbies while being comfortable and happy too. For example, visiting people who are out of town and staying a night, goes to parties and enjoys the flow. For introverts, they prefer to be alone and prefer working rather than resting all the time (Kienlen, 2007c). Introverts usually neglect health due to no solid reasons, and fail to meet daily requirement. For example, going to bed very late, consuming food late at night, fail to complete work load in time, reaching late to work place, late to school and college (Laney, 2011). Finally, Science Daily (2009) states that people who experience a lot of negative emotion and do not express them experience more health problems.
Ambiversion is a term used to describe people who fall more or less directly in the middle and exhibit tendencies of both groups. They are normally comfortable with groups and enjoy social interaction, but also relishes time alone and away from the crowd. The pros of ambiverion individuals are such as below: Ambiversion individuals have some good behavior that will do well for their health. Due to their personality, they will go out and mix with people sometimes. Examples of activity they may join are; exercising, shopping, and etc. These activities will make them more healthy because compare to people who are introversion they do not get out much often, so they lack of the nutrition for the body. Plus, doing that activity will also make their body fitter and will also build up their immune system. Sometimes their friends will ask them to go for activities like drinking in pub and go clubbing.
These activities are not good for the health, like drinking too much alcohol will destroy the liver, where it will cause the liver not able to digest food properly when they reach old age. Other than causing the liver to malfunction, drinking will also cause to accidents. Some individuals tend to drink while driving; this is certainly not good for the health because it can cause the individual to hurt themselves or worst, death. An ambiversion individual will sometimes reject to go to places like pubs or clubs because there are crowded will peoples, and they sometimes dislike being with so many people at one place. According to some research made, they said that ambiversion individuals are some of the nicest, most generous, and caring people. So they have stress at their workplace, college and etc. with having less stress they can have enough sleep, being less angry, more patience and less aggressive. This will contribute to their health because stress can cause illness or pain to an individual.
In the conclusion, we can say that it is undeniable that personality can affect someone’s healthy. No matter that person has an introverted or extroverted personality, it is directly affect whether the person will tends to be more healthy or unhealthy in their mental or physical, all of these depends on their emotional. A balance of these two personalities should be achieved in order to reach an “ambiversion” state. It thus decrease the emotional convention of someone, as what we know, a great changes of emotional convention is not good to us and it may lead to mental illness. So, we cannot say that the balance of these two personalities can totally avoid illness but “ambiversion” can be achieved in order to reduce the chances of having any illness.

References
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