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Evidence That Good Moods Prevent Colds
duguk writes in with another reason to keep happy over Christmas. A new scientific study suggests that people who frequently experience positive emotions are less likely to catch colds. Psychologist Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University interviewed 193 healthy adults daily for two weeks and recorded the positive and negative emotions they had experienced each day. The researchers then exposed the volunteers to a cold or a flu virus. Those with "generally positive outlooks" reported fewer cold symptoms. From the article: "'We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk,' Cohen says... Although a positive emotional style bore no relation to whether participants became infected, it protected against the emergence of cold symptoms. For instance, among people infected by the influenza virus... 28 percent who often reported positive emotions developed coughs, congestion, and other cold symptoms, as compared with... 41 percent who rarely reported positive emotions."
. . . choo!
Anybody got a tissue?
What?
Maybe happy people just don't complain as much.
It's an interesting correlation, but the article/study doesn't give a convincing argument "positive" feelings can prevent illness. It simply reports positive feelings and emotions are closely correlated to resistance to acquiring or displaying symptoms from influenza (rhinovirus).
I don't discount a positive attitude is a good thing to have, but a more rigorous approach could have given better or more convincing results. For example, is it possible some people have a less positive outlook or less positive emotions because they have a less effective immune system and therefor are more often ill (thus introducing a possible reason for the less positive emotions)?
Relatedly, is it possible those with positive outlooks and emotions are just that because they have a strong immune system and are rarely ill?
I'd be interested in seeing a study where some of the "negative" subjects were trained in positive emotions and reintroduced to the study to see if their results are different. I'd like to guess positive feelings positively influences their health, but this study doesn't give that proof.
(My favorite example of this kind of "study" is the correlation between increased sales of ice cream and drownings, leading some to possibly think ice cream increases drowning risk... of course ignoring the fact that ice cream sales increase in warmer weather when more people are swimming.)
Every morning since I started drinking regularly ... but at the same time, I haven't had a cold since then either.
I am, therefore you think.
Maybe the researchers should consider that the good mood is the symptom, not the cause.
Maybe people with a bad attitude have it because of their tendancy in the past to have greater symptoms of disease. Unless w can randomize positive and negative 'attitude' to people, we'll never know for sure.
That's what's called "psychology" and "power of the mind"
Laughter is the best medicine... so bring out the nitrous!
1 voice in a sea of voices
Researchers determine that people that don't have colds are in better moods than people who do.
I love the autumn season. So around september or october, I'm such in a good mood that I forget about my fear of needles and go to the pharmacy to get the year's flu shot. And get what? I never get the flu!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I generally don't feel positive when I have a cold.
Read The Fine Summary Editors:
Editor: A new scientific study suggests that people who frequently experience positive emotions are less likely to catch colds.
Summary: Although a positive emotional style bore no relation to whether participants became infected...
This is why 'literate' people often score so poorly on literacy tests. They can read a five-line summary of something and believe the exact opposite of the conclusion.
...but I would like to take the opportunity to point out that this Sheldon Cohen is not the same as the former IRS tax commissioner who wrote the tax code in '78 and is the author of the famous and controversial book on the insight into the IRS's inner chamber members that so many of us are familiar with.
I was introduced to the former Mr. Cohen at Stanford in '98. After reading a few of his papers on the immune system, I would not doubt the legitimacy of his trials. Here's a bit more on his works!
Or maybe people with a good out look on life just don't whine and complain as much. Maybe to happy people a little sniffle isn't as noticable as someone who is always complaining about things. It's like those people who look outside, see 2 flakes of snow and call into work saying they can't come in because it's snowing. "Oh, so your taking a vacation day??" OK, I'll be in on time. Sigh.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
I've had one of the WORST years. I've lost >$20k, I've lost my mother and I've gained weight.
However, I have not been sick. One of the few good things.
Talk about kicking someone when they're down.
Could it not be possible that those with a more positive outlook on life view their symptoms and not so bad, whereas those with a negitive outlook view their symptoms as more troublesome? S.
(Yes, this is the UK, so she manages to hold down a steady office job, pay her taxes etc, rather than being slung in prison for life. She doesn't commit crime to feed her habit, tho' she did go through a period of "borrowing" from the petty cash she'd been put in charge of, and putting it back when she got paid...)
Of course, "data" isn't the plural of "anecdote".
The findings of the study states the exact opposite of the headline and the link to the article. But I supose the current headline does have a certain...'truthiness' to it that will help drive up click throughs.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Bah Humbug. :sniffles:
I eat bananas on a regular basis and have noticed that this keeps rogue alligators away from me. The victims of rogue alligator attacks never have bananas on their person. I strongly advise those who are worried about rogue attack from alligators to eat bananas.
That's the first, and probbably most glaring problem with this study. The second is that according t o the article the cold symptoms were self-reported. How do we know that people with "positive" emotions aren't just more willing to ignore any symptoms they have, or rate them lower? In other words attitude might affect how people interpret, or report symptoms.
I'd have been more impressed if the researchers had chosen an objective method of measuring symptoms rather than a subjective one.
AccountKiller
::sniffle:: "Gee boss, I could really use a substantial increase in my salary."
-or-
::sniffle:: "C'mon honey, doing it would make me feel sooo much better."
While it is true that this isn't a very through investigation I think the point is that there is a correlation. Once this has been established it is easier to get funding to do additional, more thorough, testings. So while this article isn't stating facts I think that it would be interesting for them to get funding and do additional research in this area.
I'm a lot happier when my apartment is cleaned up. The dust bunnies are killed behind the computers. The dirty dishes are washed and put away. The "it's weird and pissed off" thing is gone from the bathroom. The living room is picked up and the game console put away. The bedsheets are fresh from the laundry. All I need is a magical girl to move in to complete my happiness. :P
Time to start the injections of the happy drug!
People who report fewer negative feelings also report fewer cold symptoms. Duh!
Nothing to do with a "greater resistance" to anything, just looking on the bright side.
Please can we leave medical experiments to medically-trained people in future and not "psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and his colleagues". Also this was a study published in 2003
Reduce, reuse, cycle
This is what happens when you try to treat correlation as causation, it can be interpreted many different ways.
Maxim had an interesting article that semen, when absorbed through the vagina, helped keep women from being depressed. So if sex helps women be happy, and happiness prevents colds, that shot of penis-cillin really is helpful!
Too bad it won't work in a pick-up line.
My Sysadmin Blog
..I'm just too cool for a cold.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Happy->less run-down->less prone to lurgies. Such chains are well understood.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Wonder what would happen if they did a study like this about STD's? "I felt great and I caught it anyway!!! AAUUUGH!"
C|N>K
Gives a new meaning to getting your "Flu-shot"!
Man in club, "Hey babe! How abut a flu shot!"
How the hell did they get that past IRB (Institutional Review Board)?
-c
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
The happiest man in the world, Richard Simmons, is immortal.
- John
You are absolutely right. While the grandparent is correct in his saying that corelation does not imply causation, the scientists who did the study never said that this corelation implied a causation. The study reads very plainly that they found a corelation between mood and cold symptoms. That's pretty much all they said. The questions brought up by the grandparent and some of the replies to it are probably the same questions these scientists are asking and would probably like to do further study to figure out if there was in fact causation, or if positive people don't complain much. In my experience, mood seems to sometimes cause sickness. I know people with depression who are always getting sick. I even once faked sick to stay home from school. My performance was so convincing that I actually did get sick and got to stay home a second day, except I felt like crap. Anxiety and stress can certainly make you feel like crap, even vomit, even if you don't actually have any virus/infection/etc.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
Maybe more sickly people have a harder time maintaining a positive attitude.
People who tend to express more negative emotions are typically more emotionally stressed. Chronic excessive emotional stress has been quite well known to be physically debilitating, as it generally weakens the immune system. Beyond that, the link between depression and immunodeficiency is hardly a new one; its causation actually swings in both directions.
Do you know what is the dawn? is a power envelope that leaks most of the negative vibrations and directly is related to the physical part. It is possible to emphasize that the people who have their dawn debilitated by an esoteric power bassoon can absorb influences ominous and be prone to have psychosomatic upheavals.
They claim this law can be explained with Quantum Mechanics (sic). I personally don't know much about it but so far it seems to be working for me.
HTML is obsolete. It's time for a new, simpler and richer markup language.
In my experience, the number of people I'm exposed to while in a good mood is far greater than it is when I'm not in a good mood. Statistically, it seems like happier people should be far more likely to get sick.
Perhaps this may be dictated more by *who* we're exposed to depending on our mood, rather than by our mood itself.
For example, a happy person is probably more likely to go to a random place for entertain among others upon impulse, while unhappy people may be more likely to either be around one or two close friends/relatives or they simply remain alone.
Another point of interest would be to see how many of these happy/unhappy people had recently been to a doctor's office or knew someone that had been they had contact with.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Moods and flu prevention form a mere correlation from the common cause of sunlight.
These results occurred regardless of objective indicators of immune response. The results showed that between two people with equally healthy immune systems, the one with the PES would experience or manifest fewer symptoms than the one with the NES, although both were equally likely to be infected by the virus.
I agree that it does not necessarily prove causation; however, it does prove that the researchers accounted for your counter-example.
That's how I read it, dyslectic flare up. All normal now. How are you?
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
Each person was quarantined in a separate room and monitored for 5 or 6 days.
Monitored for what? The article doesn't say. However it DOES say this:
Unlike the negatively inclined participants, they reported fewer cold symptoms than were detected in medical exams.
So the only result was that the people with "positive" outlooks reported less than were actually detected. Isn't that exactly what I said might be a problem with this study?
Mood has a great deal to do with morbidity. Physicians have known for YEARS that the mortality and morbidity rate for an individual will skyrocket in the first year after a divorce, bereavement of a loved one, or some other major stress factor.
And I suspect these are all correlation studies. See correlation doesn't imply causation.
AccountKiller
Maybe people with "generally positive outlooks" are more likely to have gotten flu shots. I wonder if they asked about that.
Seriously- your mood is a reflection of your internal chemical state.
There are long term studies that show people's basic moods do not change.
In my case, everything went to hell about 18 months ago after a lifetime of being very easy going.
All the sudden, I was anxious, irritable, had night sweats, couldn't think straight, was sleeping 9+ hours and still tired, had low sex drive, my reaction speed in sports sucked, and I was getting sick after years of not getting sick. My mood sucked!
After a comprehensive physical the reason was clear. My free testosterone levels had dropped from some normal range to below 270. A few *DAYS* of hormone replacement cream and the anxiety and night sweats stopped. My thinking took maybe 5 or 6 days to return. At the same time, I started waking up rested after 7 hours of sleep. My sex drive came back with a vengence. My reaction speed came back in sports (tho the gimp knee is still gimp).
I *SERIOUSLY* think low testosterone levels explains a huge number of problems with men past 40 (about 43 to 44 to be precise). I even think it explains a lot of alcoholism even tho I didn't have that issue- I did experience a lot of relief from my anxiety from casual drinking. Anxiety that is gone now.
And when I forget to put on the cream- I can *FEEL* the anxiety creep back over me. My logical mind knows there is no cause for it (it feels like when your boss asks you to drop by their office on the way out and you know it's going to be a bad meeting) I still feel that way anyway.
So my theory is that you fix hormones (well- and for a lot of other people Thyroid), you fix "mood" secondarily while also fixing getting sick.
Oh yea... been sick maybe 3 days since I started the HRT.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
then you are more likely to overlook sniffles and a cough my 2E-2 cents
She went on to say that some badly conducted studies seemed to point to positive thinking having an effect on cancer cure. She said that's a cruel thing, to give such false hope to people who are suffering from a possibly terminal disease. When the patients tried to get better by "positive" thinking without effect, they suffered an additional pain, they thought they were getting worse from their own incompetence at having thoughts that were "positive" enough. They had a guilt syndrome added unnecessarily to all the suffering related to being a cancer patient.
Apparently the guy who wanted the proof never got a nervous cold himself. I have.
:-)
Coming back from getting my motorcycle driver's license, I sneezed all the way from the instructor's to the town house (where I got my license), which is a good ride through the city.
I was already suffering from nervous colds back then. My fellow employees expected the daily sneeze around 3 pm.
It's a dumb thing, really. But it's there. Sneezing to break the nervous tension. And it feels lame
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Isn't the obvious solution to look at the affects anti-depressants have on general health? This should be easy, theres plenty of people on and off (so you don't have to worry about not having enough people to correct for various other variables like socioeconomic status). I think if people on mood elevators tended to be healthier, or could be shown to become healthier, we would have our answer. It would be a very interesting study, wouldn't it?
Relax I just want some peanuts.
"Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis." -- Jack Handy
Well, that would probably be why I have a really bad cold right now, and have for the last 3 days. You f*ckers. (j/k)
. . . people who catch fewer colds generally have a more positive outlook?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Any scientist/epidemiologist who publishes studies where the Relative Risk is less than 3.00 (in this case it was 1.47) should be severely chastised. RR's 3 are effectively meaningless. At least this isn't the result of a data dredge, but sample size is small.
Rules of thumb for those trying to use epidemiology.
1. Find a disease that is apparently abnormally present.
2. Use epidemiological tools to isolate potential causes of abnormality.
3. Verify the cause.
Doing this backwards is pointless. That is -- find a cause and try to link it to a disease. The number of variables involved are too involved to disentangle.
If you think you can disentangle the variables involved in such a calculation, you haven't looked at the data gathering methods involved. How do you measure all variables associated with the people involved? Strap a recorder to them? Think about all the variables you have to someone garner from the recorder. Who did they come in contact with, what were those people's health profile?
The only reason these things are interesting is that somehow they keep getting published.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
Thank you! Finally an excuse to eat more chocolate! After all, nothing makes one feel better than chocolate, and feeling better boosts your immune system and prevents colds.
If they need volunteers for a chocolate study to prove its ability to prevent colds, sign me up!
Alicia.
I'll try.
You seem to feel that correlations are both obvious and clear enough not to require any institutional effort at all. "So why do this?"
There are multiple levels of results responding to someone's random remark at lunch. This study doesn't list costs, but notice it only aimed for both an easy and small result, and required nothing fancy for equipment. This means it was cheap to operate. Cheap is good. Cheap is easier to fit into stray budgetary dollars.
"Oh look. Lab 4167 screwed up and left us 200 virus samples when someone screwed up the paperwork. Jack was asking about why he always feels like crap. Let's do a cheap study. Hey Boss, can we re-requisition those samples? Then they get to go in your Research Supply column instead of the Screw-Up Column. Oh, yea, have the secretary get me a pack of graph paper from the supply cabinet."
I feel this is perfect Compromise Science. *By dispeling* the "you're full of #$%#$%" counterargument, this kind of thing can greenlight the $100,000 needed to do the full size study with 750 people over 2 years, with all those cross-controls.
I don't know if I'm always happy, but I actively deflect bad-emotion causing situations on a game theory level, and it also so happens that I have missed exactly 1 day from illness in two years.
Mr. Grump: "Why the #$%$ do I feel like @##$@#$?"
Optimist : "I don't know what you're talking about"
Your post above hints at *synergy*.
Exterior cause annoys you, then getting ill further annoys you.
Deflect exterior cause, and it so happens that you not annoyed by the illness you don't have.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think it will be shown that its stress which effects colds.--that, if they took everyone who was in a non-positive mood, but not generally distressed, they wouldn't be shown to be any more likely to get a cold.
My father always said that laughter was the best medicine, which is why so many of us died of tuberculosis.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
I hate research claims like this, always trying to indicate that if you just behave like every high quality mindless drone your health will be better. Really - are these people healthier because they have positive emotions, or are they happier because they are healthier? Stupid, stupid research!
Or perhaps people just put a lower value on their misery when they have a positive attitude. I've worked in the medical field for some time, and it's well known that what we call "frequent flyers" usually (usually, not always) have some psychological issues. I read a study once in a medical journal (can't remember where or when) that people with chronic pain conditions also tend to have underlying psychiatric conditions. It's a murky question, because you can't tell if chronic pain causes psych conditions, or people with psych conditions are more likely to dramatize every passing physical symptom, or whether doctors tend to see psychiatric problems in patients they can't cure. All of those elements probably come into play on some level, though we'll never be able to isolate them and say definitively which role is played by what.
i think positive feelings and emotions could be correlated to resistance to cold/flu since people with positive moods are normally under less stress... and since studies show stress of any kind lower one immune system; this is just reconfirming that stress lowers ones immune system ability.... or maybe its the other way around. when one is stressed they have negative emotions and feel badly, thus stress appears to lower immune system ability, but actually its just how you think about the stress the causes the lower immune resistance. or maybe some kind of inter action of the two.
They only asked 100 people. In the two groups, they had 50 people. The numbers are 14 and 23. If you assume Poisson statistics, the error bars are about 4-5. These numbers are statistically consistent with no difference whatsoever. And as someone else said, the actual study showed no difference between infection rates, only in reported symptoms.
but I sure as hell was 'in a good mood' after when my cold went away!
if thats the case then my middle name must be cold.
Obviously... if you've got your head in your hands, you probably arn't thinking about washing them. And don't get me started on wiping away tears, HELLO eye infections!
-- http://vectorvector.tumblr.com/
Evidence that optimists are more likely to deny illness.
BTW, doesn't that make them more likely to spread disease?
PARENT must be modded up!!!
Then why are so many diseases sexually transmitted?
It is in no way news that people who experience positive emotions report fewer illnesses.
Why do people keep STATING THE OBVIOUS and conducting "STUDIES" only to "DISCOVER" things THAT ARE ALREADY KNOWN?!?!?!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Could it be that people are happier when they are not sick? I am !!!!
I've noticed this firsthand, for almost 20 years I worked on the road where I would meet many people, I was outside most of the time during the year all by myself, any contact with the company or co-workers was by phone. I would get many colds, sometimes back-to-back which I thought was unusual but I hated my job and going to work everyday I thought it was normal for me to catch a cold or two, or more, every year - or so I thought.
I'm now inside doing a similar job but I work with about two hundred people, I've worked there for almost two years, it's great! I used to be quite shy but now being "on stage" as I refer to it really has helped me and I'm much more social, I haven't been sick since I started working there.
My shyness hasn't been cured, it's who I am, and I still don't have a girlfriend but to me my new healthier work environment (it's not prefect but way better than before) is proof that being happy is good for your health and possibly prevents many types of illnesses.
I would like to point out that, perhaps, those who reported positive emotions showed them BECAUSE they did not hawe cold symptoms, not the other way around. In other words, they were happy because they were not sick, whereas the sad people were sad because they often get sick, and are sick while this study is taking place. Is this not a plausible explanation?
...all night last Saturday until about 8 o'clock Sunday morning. Now I've got a stinking cold.
Who cares about the flu? What the world needs is experimental proof that a really good screw can prevent AIDS.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Okay, for starters this moronic study is based around subjective answers by participants sans a control group. So, I would like to point out that the more "positive" people either have a decreased tendency to report negativity (cold symptoms) due to their optimism, or the "negative" persons complain constantly. The amount of objectivity in this study is apalling. Any idiot these days can do a "scientific" study and pass their pseudo-science off as the real thing. Why? Because thanks to news media, like /.
They really aught to do blood tests for immunogenic markers, keep their participants in clean rooms, screen them for drugs, get their and their family's mental history... etc. And even if they did all that, what GOOD would it do to know this fact supposing that it were true!!!!!!!???????? Nobody wants to be unhappy!
Next thing you know, mothers will be telling their children: be happy, or you'll catch a cold!
Rather than: put on a jacket, Johnny!
Seriously people. Whoop de do. The utility of this study is completely moot. Especially since colds are short-lived and reverseable. Gawd!
This is not science. It's just ANOTHER slashdot BS article. Honestly, I expect this kind of stuff out of Digg.
"happy people" will complain less about the symptoms they have.
"unhappy people" will complain more.
Fucking obvious.
sheesh.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
I'm a miserable whinging prick and I never get colds.
Got to have music too.
*cough cough*
This sore throat I've had for the last couple weeks really pisses me off!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Am I miserable because I am sick, or am I sick because I am miserable?
...adding lemon juice to rinse water gives glasses a cleaner, brighter finish.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I can also confirm a strong positive correlation between the amount of sleep I get, my "good" disposition and my health...
Fuck I hate sickly cunts. You know the kind, always sickly. To them I say: FUCK YOU WEAKLING
I am a Psychologist and a Philosoph :)
Yes, correlation does not imply causation, but as Tufte put it:
correlation is no sufficient but a necessary condition for causation.
another point:
the study does take into account that people might just be underreporting their symptoms:
from the abstract, "In an earlier study, positive emotional style (PES) was associated with resistance to the common cold and a bias to underreport (relative to objective disease markers) symptom severity. " not sure if they are able to make an efficient distinction, but at least they are aware of it.
One important aspect in many postings is the (somewhat) wonder about the possibility of the "mind" influencing the body. This is COMPLETELY misplaced in my opinion. most slashdotter pride themself of their naturalistic, positivistic worldview. I am a materialist myself, i do not believe in any mindstuff that cartesian dualism implies. so what is left then:
you have one aspect of your body(self) influencing another one. this connection might still be disbelieved and disputed,
but it should be because of theoretical and/or empirical reasons and not some lurking implicit dualism.
as a psychologist researcher once said(as far as i can remember) after being told that biological differences between homo- and heterosexuals have been found: "well, where else did you expect to find them? but when and how did they get there"
Ever since my life got more stressful, and consequently, more frustrating (hence more bad moods), I've been sick a lot more, whereas in my care-free youth, I got sick maybe once every 2-3 years.
My solution is clear: Quit my job, and start playing kickball all summer. I'll live forever!
Student Manager - Take control of your education!
Does this mean that Nitrous Oxide cures hyperthermia?
http://bymyreckoning.com/Good mood or staying happy helps improve a person's immunity for
any kind of disease.
I think this is obvious.
It may be less helpful where the disease has less to do with the immunity of
the person.