Optimism: The Best Ally For An Iron Health

Psychosomatic medicine understands the mind and the body as a unit. On this basis, many conclusions about the role of a positive attitude in healing have become popular, but is it possible to establish such a direct relationship between optimism and good health? We review the most reliable studies on the subject.

Optimism and its relationship to good health

Thinking of the mind and the body as two separate entities is an idea that already existed in classical Greece, but it was as a result of the writings of the French philosopher, mathematician and physiologist René Descartes, in the seventeenth century, that it really took on great force.

Descartes proposed that the “rational soul” was separate from the body and that the two were connected in the pineal gland. But, despite being the father of this mind-body dualism, he also said that the mind can affect the body and vice versa, an idea criticized by other philosophers who said that this interaction was impossible.

In any case, for 350 years, Western culture has separated the body from the mind. This is evident in our everyday language: we ask ourselves if a symptom is “physical or mental” or we advise a friend who wants to change a habit that is “psychologically” strong, because “the mind is stronger than the body”.

However, the mutual influence between psychological and physical processes is increasingly recognized. Today there are disciplines such as neuropsychoimmunology – which studies the relationship between the nervous system, the body’s defenses, emotions, thoughts and behavior – or social neuroscience – which investigates the relationship between brain processes and social interactions.

Likewise, there has been a renewed interest and respect for the healing systems of traditional cultures, such as acupuncture, and for ancient practices and wisdom, such as yoga and meditation, which have a holistic view of health.

Science and New Age currents

There are also non-scientific movements – such as the new age currents – that emphasize the influence of the mind on the body. Some of these new philosophies that have become so popular exaggerate the influence of the mind on the body and even propose that everything that happens to us is the product of our psychology.

I remember an occasion when I heard an acquaintance in horror say quietly: “Fulanita developed cancer. He contained his anger a lot and did not express his emotions ”. What was he based on to say that? This is a very cruel statement, because, in addition to not having any empirical evidence, we are dangerously close to “blaming the sick.”

What does science tell us about the relationship between our moods and thoughts and our physical health? There are countless investigations that try to answer this question; Here we will focus on those studies carried out in recent years in the field of positive psychology, the part of psychology that scientifically studies well-being and happiness.

Studies on happiness

Dr. Ed Diener, considered the father of the study of happiness and winner of the most important award of the American Psychological Association for his contributions, has carried out, together with his collaborator Micaela Chan, a meta-analysis of all the research that has been done up to the date on the relationship between happiness and health.

A meta-analysis is a statistical procedure that compares the data obtained in different studies that have investigated the same topic using different instruments and techniques. The meta-analysis allows more reliable conclusions to be reached than if the results of the studies are considered separately. These are some of his most notable deductions:

1. Life satisfaction

People with high levels of subjective well-being (happiness) feel satisfied with their lives, have few negative and many positive emotions, and think optimistically. Happiness influences health and longevity, but there is no clear evidence that it lengthens the lives of people with certain diseases, such as cancer.

What is clear is that positive emotions predict health and longevity better than negative emotions : knowing how happy someone is is more useful in predicting their health than knowing about their painful or sad emotions.

2. Better cardiovascular health

Mood and emotions are also associated with cardiovascular health. Pessimistic people tend to have higher blood pressure. In addition, it has been observed that physically healthy people who suffered from depression or anxiety were more likely to develop heart disease.

Heart patients with depression and anxiety similarly made their heart conditions worse over time than patients who were not depressed.

3. Prevents inflammation

Positive psychological states can influence clotting and inflammation factors.

Negative affects slow down the healing process and increase the risk of infection. Those who feel more angry tend to have a lower immune response after being vaccinated.

In contrast, long-term positive emotion predicts the proper functioning of the immune system. Positive emotions are also related to a lower perception of pain.

4. Reduces cortisol levels

Stress causes us to secrete a hormone called cortisol. Research indicates that having low cortisol levels can reduce the risk of metabolic, immune, and inflammatory diseases.

5. Slows aging

The influence of emotions reaches the chromosomes. The ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, get shorter as we age and are implicated in many diseases and premature aging. Well, people with low levels of happiness tend to have greater telomere shortening.

One of the reasons why happiness may be related to good health is that it is associated with protective psychosocial behaviors :

• People with more positive emotions tend to have more social connections and more support
• Respond adaptively to difficulties
• They tend to exercise more, not smoke, and watch their diet

Looking for a positive human environment

Also the quality of our relationships can affect our physiology.

The psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser and her collaborators (2005) subjected a group of married couples to a hospital study that consisted of making small wounds on their arms and observing their evolution.

The result: The wounds of couples whose marriages were conflictive took longer to heal and produced less cytokine, a protein that regulates cell function.

Also, practicing meditation can help us raise our levels of subjective well-being. This was demonstrated by Dr. Richard Davidson and his team (2003) by comparing a group of meditation practitioners with another of non-meditating people.

The researchers found that the former had greater positive affect, greater activation of the left brain and more antibodies after being vaccinated against the flu.

Can we conclude, then, that if we try to experience positive emotions and face events with optimism, we will drive disease out of our lives?

Everything seems to indicate that longer lasting emotions can have a significant effect on our health, since some studies referring to short and not very intense emotions have not observed this effect.

The greatest certainty is that subjective well-being – happiness – predicts health and longevity in healthy populations. It is not so clear that the same happens with sick people, which underlines the complexity of this phenomenon.

Thus, emotions can help us preserve the health that we already enjoy, but not necessarily to prevent or reverse certain diseases, whose causes can be multiple and independent of the psychological.

The relationship between the psychological and the physical

When thinking about the relationship between psychology and physical health, the image of a two-way highway comes to mind: the psychological affects the physical, and the physical affects the psychological. But this does not mean that the highway always has the same number of lanes in each direction.

It is possible that, in a certain situation, there are more lanes in one direction than in the other and that the body weighs more than the mind, or vice versa. And at other times, the mind-body influence may be mutual and very even.

In any case, let us do what is in our power to make the cultivation of positive emotions a constant in our lives, in order to preserve health.

And at the same time, let us be careful before attributing psychological reasons to someone’s illness, since we do not know which lanes go, and in what direction, on the highway of their life.