Objective
Emotion regulation has been associated with good, and dysregulation with poor subjective health; but it is unclear if emotion regulation is related to metabolic syndrome.
Methods
Associations between the metabolic syndrome factor (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, high-density lipoprotein, triglycerides, and glucose), emotion regulation (the strategies of repair and maintenance, self-perceived emotion regulation) and dysregulation (emotional ambivalence); and subjective health (self-rated health and psychosomatic symptoms) were studied using a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The participants (96 women, 85 men) were drawn from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS).
Results
High repair was associated directly to the low metabolic syndrome factor, while high maintenance, high self-perceived emotion regulation, and low emotional ambivalence were related indirectly to the low metabolic syndrome factor through good subjective health.
Conclusions
Successful emotion regulation may have an association not only with the subjective experience of health, but also with physiological regulation systems, leading to a reduced risk for metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome, consisting of insulin resistance, abdominal obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and microalbuminuria, is a well-known risk factor for cardiovascular disease and diabetes [1]. The discoveries of neuro-endocrinal responses to emotion regulation offer grounds for assuming that emotion regulation may play a role in the development of metabolic syndrome. Physiological responses to emotion regulation include the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis [2] and [3] and the autonomic nervous system [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] and [8], which have been considered as likely factors establishing the underlying mechanisms for metabolic syndrome [9], [10] and [11]. The activation, or inhibition, of these systems by emotion regulation may lead to changes in some of the components of metabolic syndrome and therefore increase, or decrease, the risk for it. In this study, we investigated the relation of emotion regulation and dysregulation to the metabolic syndrome factor.
Associations between emotion regulation and subjective health, and between subjective health and metabolic syndrome provide an additional view of the role of subjective health in the pathway between emotion regulation and metabolic syndrome. Emotion regulation, through its function in repairing a negative emotion in a more positive direction has been associated with low levels of self-reported physical symptoms [12] and [13], good general health, increased vitality, and fewer limitations imposed by pain [14]. In contrast, emotion dysregulation, manifested by emotional ambivalence, was linked to increased physical symptoms and psychological distress [15] and [16]. Moreover, a high level of self-reported physical symptoms, low quality of life with regard to its physical aspects [17], and distress [18] were related to high incidence of metabolic syndrome. In the light of these findings, there seems to be a possibility that good subjective health protects individuals from metabolic syndrome. Whether subjective health also has a role in the relationship between metabolic syndrome and emotion regulation is unclear.
The ongoing Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS; [19] and [20]) provided an opportunity to investigate these connections. We expected emotion regulation to be positively, and dysregulation negatively associated with the low metabolic syndrome factor and with good subjective health. Furthermore, good subjective health was assumed to be related to the low metabolic syndrome factor. We expected that the same connections would be found in men and women, although men—at least in European cohorts—have a higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome [21] and [22]. No sex differences in the strategies of repair (used for repairing negative emotions) and maintenance (used for maintaining the current emotion), or emotional ambivalence have been reported, although emotion regulation, in general, is more characteristic of women [23] and [24], and some differences between men and women have been observed, with respect of the emotion regulation strategies they use [25] and [26]. Women tend to report more physical symptoms than men do [27], [28], [29] and [30], but in Finland, sex differences in physical symptoms have declined during the last decade [31], and we have not found any sex differences in psychosomatic symptom reports previously [32].
