Holistic health practitioners have been talking about the link between the mind and body for a long time. Now medical researchers are starting to study this link in a number of different ways - and are coming up with some interesting data about how our emotions and attitudes may affect our health.

In the most recent study, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, volunteers were first tested for “positive” traits like energy level, calmness, and happiness, and “negative” traits like anxiety, tension, and sadness. Then, with their permission, they were exposed to carefully selected cold or flu viruses.

The volunteers who had the highest scores for positive traits were less likely to actually get the cold or flu they’d been exposed to. Even when they did get sick, they said the symptoms weren’t that bad. Besides showing that happiness can increase resistance to colds and flu, the results seem to indicate that happiness can also affect your attitude, causing you to see things in a more positive light - even negative experiences like illness.This study focused more on the participants’ emotions than on physical data. Other research, done in the UK in 2005, took a different approach, and measured how happiness related to certain blood chemistry levels and other indicators of stress.

In the UK study, the participants were first examined and had their blood tested to be sure they were physically healthy. Then they were monitored during the course of a normal work day. The monitoring included measurement of pulse and blood pressure and collection of saliva samples to check their levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. The participants also kept a diary of their emotions at certain times of the day, so that emotions could be timed with the cortisol levels and other objective measurements.

In this study, happiness did not affect blood pressure, but it did keep cortisol levels down. Prolonged high levels of cortisol have been linked to an increased risk of diabetes and a decreased resistance to infection. So there does seem to be a link between stress and some illnesses.

This study also showed an association between decreased happiness and increased plasma fibrinogen levels. Plasma fibrinogen is important for blood clotting, which is necessary to stop bleeding. But levels that are too high can increase the risk of heart and circulatory (cardiovascular) disease.

Mind-body health is a relatively new area of research. It can be difficult to study because some of the data needed is hard to pin down. For example, it’s easy to gauge blood pressure, but how do you measure a person’s happiness level? Psychologists and psychiatrists do have tests to help diagnose mental illness, but determining mental health isn’t nearly as easy, mainly because it’s so individualized.

These two studies do show that physicians and scientists are starting to realize that there are emotional as well as physical factors involved in illness - and in health. Hopefully someday we’ll be able to put the pieces together, both to stay healthier and receive more effective treatment when we do get sick.

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