Sermon Illustrations: Personality

A Type A personality is thought to be made up of three parts: competitiveness, hostility and time urgency/impatience, or TUI. Research in the past has shown that competitiveness is not linked to health problems, whereas hostility is. Now a pioneering study has implicated TUI too. Lead author LiJing Yan of Northwestern University enlisted more than 3,000 young adults - men and women, black and white - between 18 and 30 and tracked them for 15 years. She asked them to consider four traits: 1) a tendency to get upset when having to wait, 2) a tendency to eat too quickly, 3) a feeling of pressure as the end of the regular workday approaches and 4) a feeling of time pressure in general. The respondents were then asked to rate how well these traits described them, on a scale from "very well" to "not at all." By year 13, a clear trend had emerged. Those who gave positive responses to all areas were twice as likely as the others to have developed moderate to severe hypertension (blood pressure of 140/90 or higher). ... uncontrolled hypertension could lead to heart disease, stroke, kidney failure and even dementia. Sanjay Gupta, M.D. (neurosurgeon and a CNN medical correspondent) in Time magazine 2-12-02 p127