Smile Away the Flu

Should you just forget the flu vaccine? University of Wisconsin-Madison neurologists have found a direct link between the body’s immune response and a positive attitude.

A group of 52 people volunteered to be vaccinated against the flu. But before administering the vaccinations, neuroscientist Richard Davidson and his colleagues scanned the brain activity of the subjects as they recalled a vividly happy memory, and again as they thought of another memory that made them feel sad or angry.

Your brain’s prefrontal cortex regulates your emotional responses. The right side of the prefrontal cortex (under your right temple) registers negative emotions, and the left regulates positive emotions.

The researchers tracked the volunteers’ antibody counts over the next six months. They found that six months after being vaccinated, the happier subjects (those with more activity in the left prefrontal lobe) had more antibodies in their system. The less positive volunteers (those with more activity in their right lobe) had weaker immune responses.

The conclusion was that having a happy, positive attitude actually strengthens your immune system. So if you want to strengthen your immune system, focus your mind on the positive things in your life. And smile!

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Does Fear Limit Your Potential?

Want to overcome the fear so many people are feeling today? Most of us have some personal fears, but there are also many fears  communicated to us through our environment. A good example is the widespread  fear about the Swine Flu pandemic and the worldwide financial crisis.

Not only do we see and hear constant references to these frightening scenarios in the media…the energy of collective fears also seeps into the very fabric of our reality (the quantum field), and continues to resonate around us.

Since we are all connected to the collective consciousness, we simply absorb this fear energy,  even if we don’t pay attention to the media hype and mass hysteria.

Have you ever felt nervous, edgy, tense, or vulnerable for no apparent reason even when everything in your own life was going fine? You may  have been affected by such collective fear energy.

How to Overcome Fear
It’s not easy to avoid absorbing these fearful messages, but there are a few things you can do to overcome the impact these fears have  on your life.

An obvious first step is to limit your exposure to news broadcasts – especially when they always seem to pertain to frightening events that are beyond your control such as the Swine Flu pandemic.

Deliberately focusing more on positive things will help override the negative input you receive each day too. When you take greater control of your focus and place it decisively upon the creation of a  positive reality, you contribute that same energy to the quantum field. This helps minimize some of the fearful energy being contributed by others around the world.

Spend time each day thinking about the people you love, happy memories, and the great experiences that may be waiting just around the corner for you. It may not make the scary possibilities go away completely but it will lighten your mood, leave you feeling happier and less fearful.

How to Handle Challenging Life Changes

Participation in several social groups was once thought to just complicated our lives and cause stress. But new research proves that being part of social networks actually enhances our mental and physical resilience, enabling us to=> better handle challenging life changes. 

And it even seems that memberships in social groups also increases our physical well-being. There is even evidence that membership in multiple social groups and networks are a predictor of well-being equal to that of diet and exercise.

A study of 655 stroke patients by Bernadette Boden-Albala, professor of sociomedical sciences and neurology at Columbia University, found that patients who were socially isolated are twice as likely to have another stroke within five years, compared to those with meaningful social relationships.  Being cut off from others seems to increase the risk of another stroke even more than being physically inactive, which increases the likelihood of a second stroke by about 30 percent.

Such effects are not restricted to those who have a significant health problem. In a 2008 study epidemiologists and health researchers Karen Ertel, Maria Glymour and Lisa Berkman of the Harvard School of Public Health tracked 16,638 elderly Americans over a period of six years. The findings, published in the American Journal of Public Health, revealed significantly less memory loss in those who were more socially integrated and active.

An earlier study by psychologist Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University demonstrated that a diverse social network even makes people less susceptible to the common cold. Their work, published in Psychological Science, reported  that the least sociable people in their sample were twice as likely to get colds as those who were the most sociable, even though the more sociable people were likely exposed to more germs.

Such discoveries take us beyond the old debate about body-mind dualism, which explores the nature of the link between physical and mental health. There is now compelling evidence that the health risk of social isolation is equal to the risks of smoking, high blood pressure and obesity.

Hermits beward. To handle both mental and physical serious life changes such as illness, financial loss, or even loss of a mate, it seems one of the best answers is to build a broad social support network.

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