5 Ways Positive Thinking Can Transform Your Health
Self-compassion improves health-related behaviors.
Our emotional world
has a remarkable power to determine not only our mental health, but also how
our physical well-being.
"Positive characteristics, such as optimism, vitality, meaning, and
subjective life satisfaction are immensely important in their own right," psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman
wrote in a recent Scientific American blog on optimism and heart health. "The related
fields of positive psychology and health psychology focus on rigorous
scientific investigations of how people adapt to life’s inevitable challenges,
and how that is related (or even leads to) a better quality of life."
And a growing body of research in psychology, medicine and public health
is demonstrating the health benefit of positive
emotions and their effect on
physical health. When past studies have looked at the effect of emotions on
physical health, it has tended to focus on the deleterious effect of negative
emotions like anger and mental health conditions such as anxiety and
depression.
Here are five positive emotions that have been shown to improve
physical health and prevent disease.
Optimism
may protect the heart.
While we usually
define optimism as a sunny outlook towards the future, it also encompasses much
more than that. The hopeful emotion acts as a coping mechanism that can help
individuals to prevail through life's challenges by maintaining a conviction
that things will work out in life.
A growing body of research has suggested that cultivating this
quality can have a protective effect on the heart. According to a 2012 review of literature , a number of studies have shown that
people with optimistic personalities are at a reduced risk of cardiovascular
events. More recently, a fascinating study found that language used on Twitter could
predict mortality from heart disease -- specifically, language related to
optimism and resiliency ("overcome," "stronger,"
"faith") was associated with a lower risk of mortality within a
particular community.
Optimism's benefits for physical health also extend beyond heart health.
Here are a few other ways that a sunny disposition may improve health outcomes,
including improved immune system function and increased longevity.
Experiencing
awe reduces inflammatory markers associated with autoimmune disease.
Hiking through a
beautiful natural landscape, listening to moving classical music, or
participating in a religious or spiritual ritual are some of the experiences in
life that make us feel most joyful and alive. Research has shown that
experiences of art, religion and philosophy are the most common experiences
that evoke a sense of awe -- that sense of wonder and connection to something
larger than ourselves.
According to new research from the University of
California at Berkeley, awe is not only pleasurable but also enormously
beneficial for one's physical and mental health. The Berkeley study found that
those who had recently experienced awe had lower levels of cytokines,
inflammatory markers that, in chronically high levels, have been implicated in
the development of autoimmune diseases, as well as other health problems
including including heart disease, Alzheimer's and depression. This suggests
that awe promotes healthier levels of cytokines and may prevent disease.
"Rather than seeing a walk through the park or a trip to the museum
as an indulgence, we hope people will view these kind of experiences as
important ways to promote a healthy body in addition to a healthy mind," one of the study's authors, Dr.
Jennifer Stellar, told the Huffington Post. "Folding these kinds of
positive experiences into your daily routine may be more important for health
than we previously realized.
Compassion
and care for others can improve vagus nerve function.
Compassion -- a
loving concern for the well-being of others -- can make us feel positively
towards both ourselves and other people, and may improve our physical health in
at least one important way.
Positive psychologist Barbara Frederickson has conducted research on the effects of
lovingkindness meditation (LKM), a traditional Buddhist practice that involves
meditating on love and extending compassion to oneself and a progressively
large group of others. Frederickson found just six weeks of LKM training to
have a positive impact on the vagus nerve, which extends from the brain stem to
the heart, helping to regulate emotions as well as bodily systems including the
cardiovascular and digestive systems.
In boosting feelings of compassion, the meditation led to improvements
in resting vagal tone (which can be used to assess the degree of activity in
the automatic nervous system). In an interview with Emory University, Frederickson
explained that the vagus nerve plays an important role in both a person's
physical health and their feeling of love and connection to others.
“In a way, our bodies
are designed for love, because the more we love, the more healthy we become,”
she said.
Gratitude
may also benefit heart health and immune system function.
Like optimism, an "attitude of gratitude" -- an appreciation
and feeling of thankfulness for the blessings one has in life -- carries
significant mental and physical health benefits. Gratefulness, like optimism,
has been linked with improved immune health, and has also been
shown to improve sleep quality.
Gratitude may also improve health and well-being in a variety of ways
insofar as it lowers stress levels -- stress being one of the main contributing
factors to many chronic diseases. Research has shown that among older
adults, feeling a sense of gratitude towards God acts as a buffer against the
negative health effects of stress.
People who cultivate
kindness towards themselves are also kinder to their bodies, potentially helping
them to prevent or manage a range of negative physical and mental health
outcomes.
A 2013 study published in the
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin examined the relationship between
self-compassion, reactions to illness, and a range of health-related behaviors,
finding that self-compassionate people sought medical attention sooner for
symptoms that they were experiencing than people who were lacking in
self-compassion. Self-compassionate people also tended to be less depressed
about health problems they were experiencing, and also to take a more proactive
approach towards their own health.
"It is fine to experience the pain of a negative event," cognitive scientist Dr. Art Markman
wrote in Psychology Today. "But, after acknowledging the pain, it is also
important to get up and try again -- to remember that failures and illnesses
and bad relationships are not a verdict on your worth as a person, but just
another hurdle to be overcome."
The Huffington Post | By Carolyn Gregoire
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/optimism-heart-health_n_6744052.html?ir=Healthy%20Living&utm_campaign=031615&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-healthy-living&utm_content=Title&ncid=newsltushpmg00000003
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