When you hear someone described as "a heart attack about to happen," chances are that he fits the personality profile we've come to call "Type A." He (typically, the subject is male) is hard-driving, a workaholic, tense, impatient, controlling and aggressive. We contrast him with "Type B," a much mellower fellow, who's serene, relaxed and amiable.

These labels made their way into our language by way of Meyer Friedman and Roy Rosenman, medical researchers who first developed them some four decades ago in the course of their research. In the years since, they've been tested and refined. Recently, for instance, researchers at the Boston Veterans Administration Medical Center found that men and women with a dominant (or “pushy”) personality type had a sharp blood pressure reactions that may relate to cardiovascular disease. But experts say not all the "Type A" traits may be linked to disease risk.

You can be highly competitive and driven to succeed, for instance, and lead a heart-healthy life as long as you know how to relax and get enough exercise. By the same token, a workaholic in a sedentary job may be losing out on necessary physical activity. And if you're blessed (or cursed) with an aggressive personality, you can find ways to work off that energy harmlessly—exercise, again, helps. Or you can get into confrontations with friends, family and co-workers, driving them away and fueling your own hostility. In that case, you're doing two things that research shows to be unhealthy—isolating yourself from intimate relationships and nurturing anger.

So what you do with your personality is up to you (and that rule applies to both men and women). "Type A" traits aren't a death sentence, though they may take some management.

Then there's type D, a new label for patients prone to emotional distress. One Belgian study found that heart attack patients who have a lot of negative emotions and tend to keep them bottled up have a greater chance of a second heart attack than those with a more cheerful disposition. These people may have no obvious Type A traits, but they could be putting their bodies under stress just the same.

By Tom Gray
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