People Who Excel at Resisting Temptation Deliberately Avoid Tempting Situations

ENLARGE

IZHAR COHEN

By 

ANN LUKITS

Nov. 24, 2014

People who excel at resisting temptation might have a secret strategy: They deliberately avoid situations in which their self-control might fail, says a study in the February issue of Personality and Individual Differences.

Highly disciplined individuals often make decisions that minimize their exposure to temptations and distractions, the study suggests.

Effective self-control has been linked to happiness and success in life while failures of self-control can have costly consequences, researchers said. The latest study suggests people with good self-control may use so-called proactive avoidance to avoid resisting temptation.

Researchers at Florida State University recruited 38 students ages 18 to 23 years old. Self-control was rated using a scale that included 13 statements about the participants’ discipline.

Half the students were ranked as above average in self-control and half were below average.

The students were told they would be solving an anagram and could work in a noisy student lounge or wait for a quiet lab that wasn’t immediately available. Of those with below-average self-control, 37% chose the lab and 63% chose the lounge. By comparison, 53% of the subjects with above-average self-control chose the lab and 47% chose the lounge.

The finding suggests high self-control is associated with avoiding, rather than overcoming, distraction, the researchers said.

In another experiment, 53 subjects ages 18 to 60 were recruited to take an online intelligence test in one of two formats: a standard black-and-white version or a stylized version with artwork on both sides of the screen.

The subjects were told the artwork would change frequently and might be distracting. Participants’ self-control was rated on the 13-point scale.

Of those with relatively low self-control, 43% picked the standard version and 57% picked the stylized version. But among high-self-control subjects, 67% chose the standard version and 33% chose the stylized version.

Caveat: It isn’t known if high self-control is associated with avoiding other types of distractions and temptations, such as high-calorie foods while dieting, researchers said.

Thyroid damage: Having an overactive or underactive thyroid significantly increases the risk of dying, despite medications to correct the condition, says a study in PLoS One. Undetected thyroid disease may cause irreversible biological damage in patients before treatment begins, researchers suggest.

An estimated 20 million Americans have some type of thyroid disorder but two-thirds aren’t aware of it, according to the American Thyroid Association. The disease is associated with various adverse health conditions before and after diagnosis, but it also occurs in healthy individuals, researchers said.

Thyroid function is assessed by measuring levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) in the blood: low TSH indicates an overactive thyroid or hyperthyroidism, while elevated TSH means the thyroid is underactive, called hypothyroidism.

Researchers in Denmark analyzed data from 239,768 men and women, 62 years old on average, who had at least one TSH test from 1995 to 2011. Thyroid function was overactive in 3.8% and underactive in 3.5%. Over approximately 7½ years of followup, 39,964 subjects died.

Compared with normal-TSH patients, the risk of dying was 23% higher in subjects with low TSH and 7% higher for those with elevated TSH, according to the study. Men with low TSH had a higher risk of dying than women, possibly due to male reluctance to seek medical attention, the researchers said. The findings indicate the importance of reducing exposure to abnormal TSH, they said.

Caveat: The study was based on a single TSH measurement, which may have been affected by the normal circadian fluctuation of the hormone, researchers said.

Silent strokes: As much as 40% of patients with atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disorder in older people, had brain lesions due to silent strokes but no outward signs of stroke, according to a meta-analysis published this month in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Silent strokes, called silent cerebral infarctions, are caused by blood clots in areas of the brain unrelated to speech or motor function, which are typically affected by stroke. The prevalence of silent strokes in the general population ranges from 8% to 28%, researchers said.

More than 2.7 million Americans suffer from atrial fibrillation, a rapid and irregular heartbeat that can cause palpitations and weakness, according to the American Heart Association. The association estimates 15% of strokes are due to untreated atrial fibrillation, but most people aren’t aware they have the arrhythmia. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has improved detection of silent cerebral infarctions in patients with atrial fibrillation, researchers said.

The analysis, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, pooled the results of nine studies conducted in six countries from 1989 to 2013. The studies involved 4,407 patients ages 50 to 84 years old, including 505 with atrial fibrillation. Silent cerebral infarctions were diagnosed in 46% of patients with atrial fibrillation and 16% of those without the arrhythmia. The likelihood of suffering a silent stroke was 2.6 times greater in patients with all forms of atrial fibrillation, the adjusted results showed.

Caveat: Use of stroke-prevention drugs, such as low-dose aspirin, was inconsistently reported, researchers said. Only lesions greater than 3 millimeters were included, which may have underestimated lesion prevalence, they said.

Healing gel: Topical applications of petroleum gel, or Vaseline, healed second-degree burns more than one day faster on average than conventional treatment with medicated dressings, according to a report in the November issue of Burns.

Second-degree burns affect the top two layers of skin, the epidermis and dermis, and often cause blisters. Treatment usually involves dressings containing silver sulfadiazine, a type of antibiotic, but the drug can’t be used on certain patients, such as pregnant and breastfeeding women, and newborns, researchers said.

Use of petroleum gel, which is inexpensive and widely available, may be an alternative treatment, especially for patients in areas where access to health-care facilities makes return visits for dressing changes more difficult, the study suggests.

From 2009 to 2010, researchers at the University of Philippines in Manila recruited 38 patients, mostly men in their early 30s, from a hospital burn center. The burns affected up to 10% of their body and most were caused by contact with flames or hot liquids. Half of the patients were assigned to treatment with a thin layer of white petroleum gel but no cover dressing. The other half received conventional treatment with a base layer of gauze laden with silver sulfadiazine cream. This was covered with several layers of moist gauze and an outer layer of dry gauze. Patients in both groups returned to the burn center daily for dressing changes.

The burned area of skin in petroleum-gel-treated patients healed in 6.2 days, on average, compared with 7.8 days in controls. Dressing removal was significantly easier and faster in the petroleum-gel group. No signs of infection or skin allergy were reported in either group.

Caveat: The cause of the burns may have affected healing times, researchers said. The study took place in one center and was relatively small.

Car-sick kids: Motion sickness seems to peak in children at age 9 and affects girls more than boys, says a study in the November issue of the European Journal of Pediatrics. Children with poor balance tend to be more susceptible to motion sickness, which strikes significantly more often in cars and buses compared with other moving objects, the research showed.

Motion sickness is caused by a disturbance in the body’s vestibular system, which is located in the inner ear and helps to regulate balance. Few studies have looked at motion sickness in children, researchers said.

Researchers recruited 831 children ages 7 to 12 years old from nine schools in the Brazilian city of Diamantina. Susceptibility to motion sickness was assessed with a questionnaire that listed 11 objects, such as vehicles, playground equipment and escalators. The children were asked to recall how often they had experienced queasiness, nausea, or vomiting when the objects were moving. Symptoms of motion sickness were recorded during tests that measured the children’s balance under different conditions, such as spinning in both directions with the eyes open and closed.

Of the children, 43% reported feeling sick on cars and buses. By comparison, 11.7% got motion sickness on park swings, 11.6% on Ferris wheels and 7.1% on carousels. Motion sickness was rare on small boats, trains and planes.

Symptoms increased significantly from age 7 to 9 years old and then declined. Girls were more susceptible to motion sickness than boys, a sex difference also found in adults that may be due to hormonal cycles, researchers said.

Caveat: Motion sickness symptoms were self-reported.