Scientific Proof that Positive Emotions Boost Your Immune System and Keep you Healthy

​You have heard me talk over the years on how negative emotions such as stress, anxiety, resentment, and anger can weaken your immune system, negatively impact your overall health, and can even cause a psychosomatic sickness. Not to mention how a person’s mental state can also affect the degree of severity of an existing physical disease. The good news is that just like negative emotions create illnesses in our bodies, experiencing positive feelings can boost our immune system and improve our overall health.

Recently researchers have found out that positive emotions such as happiness, compassion, engagement, purpose, positive accomplishments, and optimism protect from physical illness, and they also predict lack of depression, higher achievement, and physical health. Not only are these feelings profoundly healing and soothing, but they also help people face the many challenges that may come their way. For example:

1. Happiness.

• Cheerful people live longer. In a longitudinal study, 90 percent of cheerful people were found to be alive at age eighty-five. Similarly, 54 percent of the happy people were alive at age ninety-four, while only 11 percent of the unhappy people were alive.
• Cheerful people have more marital satisfaction.
• Happy people have lower blood pressure, and their immune system is more resistant.
• Happy people are healthier, more prosperous, and more socially engaged.
• There is plenty of evidence that chronic unhappiness such as depression, anxiety, and stress are linked to poor health. Studies show that these emotions can negatively affect immunity and increase inflammation in the body, leading to diseases.
• Happy people have a better outlook on life. Therefore, they are more prepared to handle tasks and any issues that come their way at any given time.

2. Optimism—Attitude Can Affect Your Health. Research has shown that a positive attitude has a significant effect on our health. Optimism has been proven to boost the immune system and prevent chronic illness. In fact, a positive attitude can add years to your lives: 

• Compared to pessimist people, people with high levels of optimism have a 50 percent lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
• Optimistic, happy people tend to die of old age, and less than 1 percent of these people tend to die of cancer or heart disease. On the other hand, 75 percent of people that die of heart disease and 15 percent of those who die of cancer are people with lifelong patterns of anger.
• People with a lifelong habit of hopelessness tend to die thirty-five years younger than self-actualized positive people do. 75 percent of them die of cancer, and 15 percent die of heart disease.
• Studies have shown that breast cancer survivors have much shorter survival times if they have a hopeless or helpless attitude.
• Optimistic people have better memories and overall stay healthier.
• There are much higher rates of depression in pessimistic people than optimists.
• People with positive attitudes, in particular, beliefs about aging, were found to live seven and a half years longer than negative people do.

​3. Practicing Gratitude Improves Emotional and Physical Well-being. The practice of gratitude can have dramatic and lasting effects in a person’s life. Studies have discovered that grateful people are happier, less stressed, and less depressed and receive more social support

• Gratitude is associated with higher levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and lower levels of bad cholesterol (LDL).
• People who write in a gratitude journal for fifteen minutes before they go to bed sleep better and longer.
• Grateful people experience fewer aches and pains, lower blood pressure (even when under stress), and improved mental clarity, and they report feeling healthier than other people do.
• Gratitude improves psychological health such as increasing happiness and reducing depression. It also reduces toxic emotions, such as envy, resentment, frustration, and regret.
• Appreciation enhances empathy, decreases aggression, and improves self-esteem.
• Gratitude increases mental strength and resilience, reduces stress, and helps to overcome trauma.
• Practicing gratitude led to a 7 percent reduction in biomarkers of inflammation in patients with congestive heart failure.
• Keeping a gratitude diary for two weeks produced sustained reductions in perceived stress by 28 percent and depression by 16 percent.
• Gratitude lower levels of cortisol (stress hormones) by 23 percent. A daily gratitude practice can decrease the effects of neurodegeneration that occurs with increasing age.
• Writing a letter of gratitude reduced feelings of hopelessness in 88 percent of suicidal inpatients and increased levels of optimism in 94 percent.
• Grateful people have between 9 to 13 percent lower levels of Hemoglobin A1c, a key marker of glucose control that plays a vital role in diabetes.

4. Altruism and compassion also have health-promoting effects on the immune system and autonomic nervous system as well as cardiovascular efficiency. They also reduce the secretion of the stress hormone cortisol. Therefore, they can protect us from adrenal fatigue and other physical illness. Research has proven that, even when we fantasize and think about compassion, it stimulates areas of our brain and body in ways that are beneficial to our health and well-being. Other benefits include: 

• Giving produces endorphins in the brain that provide a mild version of morphine high.
• Oxytocin causes people to give more and feel more empathy toward others, even if we do not see or experience the positive effects of our gifts
• People who practice compassion produce 100 percent more DHEA, a hormone that counteracts the aging process, and 23 percent less cortisol, the stress hormone.
• Those who gave contributions of time or money are 42 percent more likely to be happy than those who do not donate.
• When individuals perform altruistic acts, they activate regions of the brain associated with pleasure (like food or sex), social connection, and trust, creating a warm glow effect they call “helper’s high.”
• Donating affects two brain reward systems that are also stimulated by food, sex, drugs, and money and an area of the brain that is related to social attachments.
• Rejecting specific causes stimulates the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LOFC), which is linked to anger, moral disgust, and other aversive traits.
• Meditation of loving-kindness and compassion are associated with feelings of happiness. It also seems to calm feelings such as fear or anger.
• People feel good when focusing on another, which can reduce preexisting distress. In other words, a positive mood can result from being other-focused.

As you can see positive emotions, and thoughts play an essential role in our health and overall well-being. Science has proven that unhappy or stressed-out thoughts are a contributing factor to poor health and lack of overall well-being. For this reason alone, why not consider making a daily habit to perform activities that boost your positive emotions, such as meditation, breathing exercises, gratitude journaling, volunteer work, and so on. It would be worth it, right?

Until next week,

Toni