hmmmm...did u know?

Did you know that recent research shows evidence that stresses the affect that the brain can actually hurt the body at the cellular and molecular level and even diminish a person's health and overall quality of life? But, the research also shows that maintaining a positive state of mind can help a person overcome some of these stress effects, even fight disease better and ultimately delay death. This gives a whole new meaning to mind over matter. A balance between the individual's coping skills and his/ her stress level can also be the extra little push of whether they are more susceptible to an illness or not. There is also evidence that an individual's beliefs can influence the course of a major illness, such as cancer. I read online that "according to a study of women with breast cancer who had mastectomies, it was their state of mind ("I am going to beat this") that kept them alive not the severity of their illness." (1) At the five-, ten- and 15-year follow-ups, the best predictor of death or recurrence of cancer was the psychological response that each woman had around three months after the first surgery. This positive mental attitude after the surgery better predicted the likelihood of dying or having a recurrence than did the size of the tumor, the tumor's histological grade or patient's age (Greer, 1991). (1). Research has also shown that people who have stronger ties to family, friends, church and community are more likely to ward off the common cold and might even recover from stronger illnesses quicker. Health professionals have largely ignored how the quality of those relationships influences a person's sickness or health. Studies show that people with only one to about three active family/ friend connections were four times more likely to get sick, when exposed to an experimentally administered cold virus than people who had six or more active social roles in their life. In one study by Cohen, he "looked at how people's levels of chronic social conflict or having a stress-invoking, demanding relationship with a spouse, friend or family member affected their susceptibility to the cold virus." (2) He found that people who had experienced around month or more of conflict were two and a half times more likely to get sick when exposed to the cold virus than those who hadn't had recent conflicts. (2)So by now your probably wondering how all this is working? I mean you can think positive and double your chances of surviving cancer. Well it all comes down to your immune system, which is often broken down by stress. Well, the longer the stress, the more the immune system is shifted from the adaptive changes seen in the "fight or flight" response to more negative changes. At first the cellular level and later in broader immune function. The most chronic stressors seem to be stress that is generally beyond a person's control or seems endless. The immune systems of the elderly or those already sick are more susceptible to any stress related changes. (3)This research was all on a new field of study called psychoneuroimmunology, which is exploring the connections between your outlook on a situation and the effects it has on your body's immunity and even nervous system. (4)Works cited:1) http://www.apa.org/releases/mind.html2) http://www.apa.org/monitor/oct04/goodhealth.html3) http://mentalhealth.about.com/od/stress/a/stressimmune604.htm