Using Physiological Dysregulation to Assess Global Health Status Associations with Self-rated Health and Health Behaviors

Six measures of physiological dysregulation were derived from 11 clinically assessed biomarkers, and related to health outcomes and health behaviors for the Hawaii Personality and Health cohort (N = 470). Measures summing extreme scores at one tail of the biomarker distributions performed better than ones summing both tails, and continuous measures performed better than count scores. Health behaviors predicted men's dysregulation but not women's. Dysregulation and health behaviors predicted self-rated health for both men and women, and depressive symptoms predicted self-rated health only for women. These findings provide preliminary guidelines for constructing valid summary measures of global health status for use in health psychology.