How do our emotions affect our body?
Scientific studies have shown that having negative emotions frequently affects your body and can even make you sick.
New research has revealed new evidence suggesting that experiencing negative emotions frequently can have an impact on the functioning of your immune system.** This research has shown that chronic exposure to stress, anxiety, and negative moods can generally greatly affect your physical health.** * Medical News Today, reported last year that some researchers had found that chronic stress has a negative impact on memory. Additionally, feelings of distress can increase the risk of having a stroke. Now, a study conducted by specialists at Pennsylvania State University at State College, found that negative moods can change the way the immune system response works and are associated with an increased risk of exacerbated inflammation. **The results of the research, led by Jennifer Graham-Engeland, associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, appear in the journal Brian, Behavior, and Immunity.
**Negative moods and inflammation
Scientists collected data for the study through a two-tier approach.** They used questionnaires that asked participants to record their feelings over time and in the moment.** These assessments were carried out over 2 weeks and allowed the team to draw emotional profiles of the participants. ** The scientists also assessed the volunteers’ immune system response by collecting blood samples from them and looking for markers of inflammation.** Inflammation occurs naturally, as part of the immune system’s response when the body reacts to infections or injuries. ** * However, high levels of inflammation are associated with poor health and a variety of chronic diseases, such as arthritis. Graham-Engeland and team noted that people who experienced negative moods several times a day for long periods of time tended to have higher levels of inflammation biomarkers in their blood. The scientists also noticed that if they collected blood samples from participants shortly after they had felt a negative emotion such as sadness or anger, biomarkers of inflammation were more present in the blood.** But, experiencing positive moods, even for a short time before collecting a blood sample, was associated with **lower levels of inflammation. Although this only applied to the male participants in this study, the researchers specify.
**‘The mood is modifiable’
The scientists are confident that their study adds crucial evidence about the impact of negative affect on health, especially since their participants were from diverse ethnic, racial and socioeconomic backgrounds.** But they warn that to confirm these findings, they will have to replicate them in subsequent studies. ** They note that the recent research was the first to explore the link between both momentary and long-term mood reports and measures of inflammation.** “We hope that this research will prompt other scientists to include momentary measures of stress and affect in research examining inflammation, replicate current findings, and help characterize the mechanisms underlying associations between affect and inflammation,” explains Graham-Engeland. * In the future, they hope that this and similar studies will allow specialists to develop better strategies to improve mood and therefore protect aspects of physical health. “Because mood is modifiable, we are excited about these findings and hope that they stimulate additional research to understand the connection between feelings and inflammation, which in turn may promote new psychosocial interventions that promote overall health and help break a cycle that can lead to chronic inflammation, disability and disease.” So that you learn how to control your emotions and take that learning into action on your path to losing weight, I GIVE YOU a 3-step GUIDE that will help you get negative emotions out of your life, but everything linked to weight loss. You just have to CLICK HERE If you want to read the original article, you can CLICK here **
