How Your Personality Affects Your Health

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Are you hostile or relaxed, stressed or social? Your traits play an important role in your well-being

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Could your personality kill you—or might it make you live longer? Could it give you heart disease, or protect you from illness? Could it push you toward or away from doctor appointments? Personality traits play a distinct role in determining how healthy we are, psychologists say. "Everything is related to everything else. How stressed or angry you are, and how you interact with the world, is contingent in large part on your personality style," says Michael Miller, editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter. "And that is going to have an enormous impact on your health."

Here's a look at common personality types and traits and how each can help or hurt your health (sometimes both.)

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