Optimism - Achieve Better Health At No Cost

A long time a go I was given a book to read. 'Pollyanna' by Eleanor H. Porter. Pollyanna is a young orphan and believes life's most difficult problems can always be surmounted by a positive attitude and pragmatism. But when she moves in with her dour aunt, she is introduced to a range of disheartened folks who challenge her upbeat outlook. Not to be discouraged, she sets to work spreading hope and good cheer.

That book hugely influenced my life and from the age of about 6, I tried my best to be optimistic in anything. I figured that if I expected the best from the world, the world would try it's best fulfill those expectations.

Martin Seligman PhD is an expert in the field of positive psychology. "When it comes to our health," says Seligman, "there are essentially four things under our control: the decision not to smoke, a commitment to exercise, the quality of our diet, and our level of optimism. And optimism is at least as beneficial as the others." 

Studies are showing more and more, how a behaviour and an attitude can affect our immune function. When our behaviour is manifested in anxiety, fear, tension, anger and sadness, there are physiological changes involved such as heart rate, blood pressure and sweating. If these changes are only short lived, then no problem. The problem lies in the stress that we are chronically under today. The body is unable to maintain equilibrium and will remain in a state of arousal - digestion is slower or not complete. Blood pressure stays at the higher levels, and inflammation is high. This is starting to be rather common knowledge now, but what really interests me is the psychoneuroimmunological effects. The links between stress and a dysregulated immune function - the fast and 'easy' road to sickness, ill health and generally being unwell.

Your thoughts and emotions influence your immune system. And your immune system influences your thoughts and emotions. The link between the three is really tight! It is the Cybernetic Loop. (Most diagrams you see have the arrows going only one way which is wrong.) The influence of each part goes both ways.

There is a large body of published scientific evidence showing how the states of mind like depression, anger and anxiety affect the functioning of your immune cells - the T-cells, B-cells, Natural Killer cells and the macrophages. These cells are our natural defences from exterior attack of illness but when there is no exterior threat to health, the cells start to turn upon you. And this makes complete sense as your nervous system links into the lymph nodes and the brain responds to those hormones, peptides and cytokines that the immune cells release. Yep - they are a close system and what affects one will affect the other. (Of course having a fully nutritional intake will help - I love probiotics as part of that intake.)

There is a classic experiment on the immune effects of emotion. Researchers asked method actors to simulate either positive emotions like happiness or negative emotions like anger and depression. Immune system function was measured before, during and after short period of emotional expression. The results showed that positive emotions caused a measurable and significant increase in immune cell function and activity. More importantly however, negative emotions had both a larger and longer lasting negative effect on the immune system. Negative emotions cause a down-regulation in immune cell and system functioning that can last for many hours after the emotional event.

There are many documented cases of people using humour, positive visualisation and meditation to help their immunity and health. There are cases where cancers and degenerative diseases have been overcome and the use of the optimism has been attributed for most of the recovery.

So if being positive and optimistic has such incredible physical effects, why would you not use it? Look at these fantastic reasons .....

1. People who score highly on psychological tests assessing happiness, produce about 50% more antibodies than the average person in response to flu vaccines.

2. Individuals that test high on scales for happiness, optimism and contentment have reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension and infections.

3. Researchers found that subjects who practiced acts of happiness and gratitude had raised energy levels, improved physical health and experienced less fatigue and pain.

4. One important study found that optimistic individuals reduced their risk of death by 50% over the nine year period of the study.

The message here is healthy mind, healthy body (and vice versa). Using this loop of biofeedback, you can then help yourself to better health.

Underpinning health are out beliefs. Maybe you have never thought about it like this...

1. What do you believe about how you do your health? (Healthing). Do you believe you can easily achieve it? Do you believe you can easily achieve wellness?

2. What do you do that is negative? What do you catch yourself out thinking about and how are you thinking? How can you stop this negativity?

3. What could you start right now to improve your health and wellness? And how could you keep that new behaviour going?

How about doing the following.....

1. Express Yourself. When you clear your head, good things happen to the rest of you. A study published in Psychosomatic Medicine reported that HIV patients who wrote about their worries for 30 minutes a day four days in a row experienced a drop in their viral load and a rise in infection-fighting T cells. Another study, in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, found that breast cancer patients who talked about their feelings regarding cancer had to schedule fewer doctors' visits for cancer-related problems. 

2. Try meditation. I am a huge advocate of Balanced Breathing but there are other ways to meditate. Tai Chi is one, yoga as well. Do anything that allows you to slow your mind, and be with your breath. This allows your body to balance from stress or depression to a state of balance. Get the equilibrium back. Come down from the physical manifestation of a busy mind.

3. Seek Help. A study by researchers at the University of Nottingham monitored the rate of healing in 93 people with foot ulcers, a skin injury common in diabetics. After six months, subjects who were clinically depressed and subjects who were not coping well emotionally with their condition showed less improvement. As a result of the findings, the university is developing a therapy program for diabetic patients. "We hope this intervention will help cut the risk of reulceration," says study author Kavita Vedhara, PhD. 

4. Lean on Your Friends. Sheldon Cohen, PhD, is a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on the link between social networks and health. In one of his studies, Cohen exposed 276 adults to the common cold virus. He wasn't surprised to find that smokers were three times more likely to get sick. But Cohen also found that subjects who had the least variety of social relationships fared even worse—they were 4.2 times more likely to catch a cold. One reason people with strong social ties are better at warding off infection may be that they have lower stress levels, Cohen says. Loneliness and marital stress are markers for lower health and wellbeing.

5. Look On The Bright Side. In another of Cohen's studies, he assessed 193 subjects to determine their level of positive emotions (including happiness, calmness, and liveliness). Again, he exposed participants to a virus—and found that people who scored low on positive emotions were three times as likely to succumb to the bug. (A few high-scoring participants fell ill, too, but they reported fewer symptoms than the average cold or flu sufferer normally experiences.) What's intriguing about this phenomenon, says Lara M. Stepleman, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and health behaviour at the Medical College of Georgia, is that "we all have the ability to choose an optimistic mind-set. And with practice, we can get better at it." 

So I took from Pollyanna the useful aspects of optimism. I love my rose tinted lenses. This is not to say that I don't recognise the more sombre aspects of life but generally looking up, and finding the silver lining has proven that not only does my health thank me, but my general wellbeing benefits. And the ripples spread to others too.

There is a lot that can be done with how you do your own 'healthing'. If it is time to look at how you can adjust or tweak what you believe about health, call me. I'm a health coach!