UNIT 13

1	One of the most fascinating findings about how our thoughts and emotions influence our health springs from a study of 180 nuns ranging in age from 75 to 103.  Researchers had access to their early journal writings and were able to determine who among them had mostly positive attitudes when faced with stressful situations, and who had more negative responses to life乫s problems.  Some nuns were in their nineties and were highly functional with full-time jobs, while others were in their seventies and disabled.
2	What stood out for researchers was this: the nuns who wrote about their lives with the most positive attitudes at a young age were 2.5 times more likely to be in better health in late life than those nuns who saw life through a darker lens.  Since the nuns in what is known as the Nun Study were all eating the same food, were nonsmokers, drank little if any alcohol, lived in similar housing, held similar jobs, were receiving the same medical care, and had the same socioeconomic status, the differences were all the more striking.  The healthiest nuns were those whose writings showed a clear sense of humor and ability to adapt to life乫s stressors 乗乗 including the normal health challenges that can accompany aging.  Researchers suspect that these nuns didn乫t live longer, healthier lives because they were never stressed.  They lived longer and healthier lives because when they experienced the typical physiological response to stress they were able to recover quickly.  By staying primarily at a low baseline of emotional stress, they protected their immune systems from becoming erratic.
3	For centuries, American medicine has regarded the question of whether our emotions can affect our health as unimportant.  Our two-hundred-year span of medical miracles has led us to respect the technological and scientific approach while giving little thought to the impact that emotions might have on our health.  In large part that乫s because, until very recently, we have lacked scientific proof that our feelings can influence our physical well-being.  In the last two decades, however, researchers have developed technology to see 乗乗 in real time 乗乗 how our emotions influence our bodies乫 cells by changing the chemical and electrical activity in our brains.  Slowly, the divide that has long separated mind and body is beginning to disappear as the two spheres of study increasingly overlap, and researchers are focusing on how our emotions, stress levels, and thought patterns might influence our basic immune cells.