Life
5 Surprising Things Your Blood Type Can Tell You About Your Mental Health
Although mental health is largely centered in the brain, it looks like another element of the body may affect it as well. Really, there are some pretty surprising things your blood type can tell you about your mental health. The relationship between mental health and the body may be more mysterious than suspected.
Not all blood is the same, and it's typically classified into eight common blood types. In general, there are four major blood groups, and each of those can be further divided into two groups depending on the presence of a protein called the Rh factor, according to the American Red Cross. With this in mind, the most common blood types are A+, A-, B+, B-, O+, O-, AB+, and AB-. (The plus or minus after the letter indicates whether the Rh factor is present.)
To find out your blood type, visit a doctor, donate blood, or invest in a blood testing kit. It's helpful to know your blood type if you want to be a blood donor, and it's crucial info for anyone getting a blood transfusion or surgery.
Although blood type is important to know for physical health reasons, it may have some relation to a person's mental health as well. Although more research is needed to fully flesh out the current studies, there does appear to be some link between mental health conditions and a person's blood type.
1Ability To Handle Stress
It's possible that certain blood types have an easier time maintaining their chill. For instance, people with type A blood may have more trouble handling stress, according to Northwestern Medicine. This may be related to the heightened levels of cortisol, AKA the stress hormone, that people with type A blood tend to have, as further noted by Northwestern Medicine.
2Depression
Even a tendency toward depression may be written in a person's blood, so to speak. For example, type O blood appears to have an association with depression, as explained in Psychological Reports. In this study, 108 volunteers given the Beck Depression Inventory appeared to show a link between type O and symptoms of depression.
3Attention-Deficit Disorder
This disorder appears to have a super interesting correlation with blood types. People with type O blood and type A blood appear to be at a greater risk for attention-deficit disorder, whereas people with type B blood seem to have a lower risk of ADD, as explained in Scientific American.
4Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
OK, so not all research agrees with this finding. But type A blood may be correlated to an increased risk for obsessive-compulsive disorder, according to a study in Neuropsychobiology. People with type O blood appear to have a lower chance of the disorder, as the same study found.
5Anxiety
If you're one of the zillions of people who deal with anxiety, then maybe your blood type is partly to blame. As it turns out, people with type A blood and type O blood had higher anxiety scores than their peers, according to a study in the Indian Journal of Basic and Applied Medical Research. Although it isn't like all people with type A or O blood have anxiety, this is still a fascinating area of study.
