From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Tue Apr 29 2003 - 16:59:21 MDT
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030429083520.htm
Searching For Meaning In Life May Boost Immune System
Pursuing goals related to living a meaningful life may boost the activity of
certain cells in the immune system, according to a small study of women who lost
a relative to breast cancer.
Women who placed more importance on these goals at the beginning of the study
had higher levels of activity among their "natural killer" immune cells. In
addition, women who elevated the importance of these goals over a one-month
period showed increases in natural killer cell activity, compared to women who
said that the importance of these goals had decreased for them.
Some of the women in the study were asked to write essays about their loss in an
attempt to discover whether this activity might change life goals and boost
immune activity, but the researchers concluded that the writing exercise itself
was not associated with changes in either.
The next step will be to uncover the ways in which "finding meaning gets 'under
the skin' and influences the immune system," say Julienne E. Bower, Ph.D., of
the University of California, Los Angeles and colleagues.
Previous research has shown a strong link between stressful events and immune
system functioning, while other studies suggest that some individuals find
positive meaning after a stressful event. Bower and colleagues wanted to test
whether writing about a stressful event might produce positive psychological
changes that could in turn affect the immune system.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 29 2003 - 17:09:42 MDT