Hello Everyone !
Feeling tired ?
Run down ?
Someone just sent me the following article :
Friday November 17, 03:13 pm
Happy people suffer fewer colds !
Staying positive through the cold season could be the best defence against getting sick, a new American study suggests.
In an experiment that exposed healthy volunteers to a cold or flu virus,researchers found that people with a generally sunny disposition were less likely to falling ill.
The findings, published in the journal "Psychosomatic Medicine", build on evidence that a "positive emotional style" can help ward of the common cold and other illnesses.
Researchers believe the reasons may be both "objective" - as in happiness boosting immune function - and "subjective"- as in happy people feeling less troubled by a scratchy throat or runny nose.
"People with a positive emotional style may have different immune responses to the virus", explained lead study author Dr Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
"And when they do get a cold, they may experience their illness as less severe."
Cohen and his colleagues had found in a previous study that happier people seemed less susceptible to catching a cold, but some questions remained as to whether the emotional trait itself had the effect.
For the new study,the researchers had 193 healthy adults complete standard measures of personality traits, self-perceived health and "emotional style."
Those who tended to be happy, energetic and easy-going were judged as having a positive emotional style,whilst those who were often unhappy, tense and hostile had a negative style.
Afterwards, the researchers gave them nasal drops containing either a cold virus or a particular flu virus that causes flu-like symptoms.
Over the next six days the volunteers reported on any aches, pains, sneezing or congestion they had, while the researchers collected objective data, like daily mucus production.
Cohen and his colleagues found that based on objective measures of nasal woes,happy people were less likely to develop a cold.
What's more, when happy folks did develop a cold, their self-rated symptoms were less severe than would be expected based on objective measures.
When the researchers weighed other factors that could explain the relationship - like volunteers' perception of their general health, their self-esteem and tendency to be optimistic - happiness itself seemed to protect from cold symptoms.
In contrast, people with negative dispositions were not at increased risk of developing a cold based on objective measures -though they did tend to get down about their symptoms.
"We find that it's really positive emotions that have the big effect", Cohen said, "not the negative ones."
So can a grumpy person fight a cold by deciding to be happy ?
Conventional wisdom holds that personality traits - unlike fleeting emotions - are "very stable and difficult to change", Cohen said.
However, he noted,some recent research suggests that emotional traits are more amenable to change than traditionally believed.
This article was from au-news
Hmmm....interesting...
What are your thoughts ?
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