In
an experiment by Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie-Mellon University in
Pittsburgh, he and his colleagues followed 193 people by interviewing
them every night on the phone for two weeks. Each person was asked how
they felt that day. These were their options: lively, happy, cheerful,
calm, at ease, sad, unhappy, tense, on edge, angry, or hostile.
Everybody
has ups and downs, so the researchers averaged each person's responses
over the two weeks to get a general measurement of the person's normal
mood.
The researchers then put the volunteers in a
quarantined facility and gave each of them nasal drops of either a cold
or a flu virus, and then tracked their symptoms for a few days.
So
what did they find out? "The people who expressed more positive
emotions overall," said Cohen, "were much less likely to become sick
with a cold or the flu than those who expressed fewer positive
emotions...And when they did get sick, they reported milder symptoms."
Your immune system works better when you're in a better mood. And your immune system does far more for you
than preventing you from getting a cold or flu. It is worth taking the
time and expending the energy to do things that improve your mood.
Adam Khan is the author of Self-Help Stuff That Works and Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation White Hot.
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