Scientists are finding more and more evidence of the remarkable effect that positive emotions have on our immune system. “I didn’t believe this when I started studying this topic 40 years ago,” says Martin Seligman, Ph.D., one of the leading experts in the field of positive psychology, “However, the statistics increased from year to year, which turned into some kind of scientific certainty.” Now scientists are talking about it: positive emotions have a healing effect on the body, and researchers continue to find more and more evidence of how attitudes and perceptions affect human immunity and the rate of recovery from injuries and diseases. Express yourself, your emotions Freeing the head from unwanted thoughts and experiences, wonderful things begin to happen. A study was conducted on patients with HIV. For four days in a row, patients wrote down all their experiences on a sheet for 30 minutes. This practice has been shown to result in a reduction in viral load and an increase in infection-fighting T cells. Be more social Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and an expert on the relationship between social activity and health, in one of his studies he conducted an experiment with 276 patients with the common cold virus. Cohen found that the least socially active individuals were 4,2 times more likely to get colds. Focus on the positives Another study by Cohen involved 193 people, each of which was assessed by the level of positive emotions (including happiness, calmness, lust for life). It also found a relationship between less positive participants and their quality of life. Lara Stapleman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Georgia, notes: “We are all free to make a choice in favor of happiness. By practicing an optimistic attitude, we gradually get used to it and get used to it.
2022-11-11