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."

Comments

This is new information?

[Osiris Ani]

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.

Re:correlation, not cause and effect

[Mr. Slippery]

The two, of course, are related to rise in population and cutting milk consumption will not prevent crime.

Actually, Alexander Schauss's research on the diets of juvenile criminals found that delinquents drank excessive amounts of milk, crowding frutis and vegetables out of the diet; and substituting orange juice or water resulted in a decrease in antisocial behavior. (Unfortunately I don't have a link; it's work from the 1980s, mentioned in passing in one of my dead trees books: "The Healing Arts", Kaptchuk and Croucher.)

Re:Bah

[Mistlefoot]

Did anyone consider that people with weak immune systems (or at a weak immunity stage) might be more prone to being in a bad mood.......

The cause and effect would then reverse - colds cause bad moods which I would consider quite obvious. I have felts many colds coming on long before they happened - and I am sure that I have read that the most contageous stage of a cold is almost before you 'know' you have it.

Now I am not saying that these 'bad mood' people actually had colds, simply that when your immune system is working hard in one area and leaving you weak in another, it is certainly possible that your moods may be affected.