The Relationships Between Self-Rated Health and Serum Lipids Across Time

Abstract

For the men, relative to T1 SRH, an increase in T2 SRH was associated with an increase in the T3 HDL-C levels relative to T2 HDL-C and with a decrease in the T3 TRI levels relative to T2 TRI. For the women, initial changes in the SRH levels did not predict follow-up changes in either of the lipids. For both genders, the reverse causation hypothesis, expecting the T1-T2 change in each of the serum lipids to predict T2-T3 change in SRH, was not supported. For the men, there is support for the hypothesis that the effects of SRH on morbidity and mortality, found by past meta-analytic studies, could be mediated by serum lipids.

The Winding Paths of the Lonesome Cowboy: Evidence for Mutual Influences Between Personality, Subjective Health, and Loneliness

“…However, subjective health is a dynamic construct tending to decrease across the life span (Andersen et al, ; Letzring et al, ; Löckenhoff et al, ; Sargent‐Cox, Anstey, & Luszcz, ). Assessing these changes in subjective health is important because they have been shown to be associated with changes in the concentration of serum lipids (Shirom, Toker, Melamed, & Shapira, ), health‐related behaviors (e.g., physical activity and eating habits; Takahashi, Edmonds, Jackson, & Roberts, ), and functional health (Huxhold, Fiori, & Windsor, ; Idler & Kasl, ). Thus, identifying individuals with an increased risk toward more rapid decline on measures of subjective health might help to initiate preventive actions in time.…”

The Dynamic Nature of Self‐Assessed Health (SAH) as a Function of Negative and Positive Affects among Cardiac Patients

“…SAH decreased immediately after myocardial infarction (MI), increased within the first 6 weeks post-MI, and then became relatively stable (Maeland & Havik, 1988). Moreover, fluctuations in SAH corresponded to health and functioning outcomes (Deeg, Van Zonneveld, Van der Maas, & Habbema, 1989;Ferraro & Kelley-Moore, 2001;Galenkamp et al, 2013;Shirom et al, 2012). In fact, changes in SAH were found to be more predictive of mortality than baseline levels of SAH (Ferraro & Kelley-Moore, 2001;Gerber, Benyamini, Goldbourt, & Drory, 2009); and those taking place within the first weeks after a major medical event were particularly prognostic of recovery (Wilcox et al, 1996).…”

“…Considerable research has shown that individuals' self-assessed health (SAH), measured on a single self-rating scale, predicts diverse health outcomes, including longevity (DeSalvo, Bloser, Reynolds, He, & Muntner, 2006;Idler & Benyamini, 1997), functional ability (Idler & Kasl, 1995;Idler, Russell, & Davis, 2000), depressive symptoms (Kosloski, Stull, Kercher, & Van Dussen, 2005), and other medical outcomes (Shirom, Toker, Melamed, & Shapira, 2012;Wang, Smith, Cumming, & Mitchell, 2006). These effects were found to be significant even after controlling for relevant covariates such as medical and socio-demographic variables.…”

Self-rated Health and Medical Outcomes in the Women’s Health Initiative: The Aging Continuum, Health, Morbidity, Mortality

“…Post-hoc analysis showed that improved SRH coincided with weight loss and increased fruit and vegetable consumption. Of possible relevance to these observations, Shirom et al [23] found that improved SRH scores were associated with an improvement in HDL-C and triglyceride levels.…”