Honking at the green light? It’s your pressure

The study, by Lijing L. Yan at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, with colleagues from the Universities of Pittsburgh and Alabama, is published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.

It attempts to tease out the unhealthy effects of psycho-social factors associated with the so-called Type A personality, and it is apparently the first to pinpoint impatience as an independent risk factor for high blood pressure.

‘‘Our study is new and needs to be confirmed, but if time urgency/impatience is confirmed as a risk factor for hypertension, patients should be screened for it by their primary care physicians,’’ said Yan, research assistant professor in preventive medicine at the Feinberg School, in Evanston, Illinois. ‘‘Individuals themselves should also try to be aware of the tendency or behaviour patterns they have.’’

The study used participant data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study. It looked at 3,308 black and white men and women from four cities, between 18 and 30 years old when they were recruited in 1985-1986 and followed through 2000-2001.

During the 15-year period, 15 per cent of the total sample developed high blood pressure. But those who scored highest on the impatience scale had 1.8 times the chance of developing high blood pressure as those who scored zero on the scale, with 11.6 per cent of people who weren’t impatient developing hypertension over time compared with 18.4 per cent of those who scored highest on the impatience scale.

Impatience was measured by self-reported answers to four questions and hostility was measured by a yes/no questionnaire that is part of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

One theory suggests hostility and impatience may produce harmful physiological effects, stimulating the nervous system, causing hyper-reactivity to stimulation, increasing the heart rate and narrowing the blood vessels, said Joseph Diamond, an expert on hypertension with Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, New York.

But Samuel Mann, a prominent hypertension expert with New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Center, was sceptical. He said his findings are that it is the people who express their hostility who are less likely to develop hypertension. ‘‘It’s the person who’s been through hell and comes in smiling who develops high blood pressure,’’ he said. (LAT-WP)