Do you have a time when you feel flooded by stress, anguish or sadness? If so, it is likely that, in addition, you feel more tired, without much strength. There are emotions that weaken your immune system, making you even more vulnerable to developing certain diseases.
Now, this does not mean that, at a given moment, you end up directly with diabetes or with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia; what happens is that the probability increases. The good news is that factors, such as psychological therapy, reverse this risk and improve not only emotional well-being, but also physical health.
What we think and feel affects us, it is evident. But people are, above anything else, what we do with what happens to us. So, knowing how to regulate, manage and face these states of emotional discomfort can change everything, and promote a better quality of life.
Emotions play a significant role in regulating body systems that influence health.
Scientists have found that people with a more positive emotional disposition tend to be healthier.
What are the emotions that weaken your immune system?
Research from 2018 found that experiencing negatively valenced emotions impacts the functioning of the immune system. The studyconducted at Pennsylvania State University, explains that some states, such as persistent distress, elevate a systemic inflammatory response.
Jennifer Graham-Engeland, director of this work, explains that this inflammation process occurs as part of the immune response. It is like when our body reacts to an infectious process, a broken bone or a skin wound. The brain, in the case of emotional discomfort, detects a threat, something to defend itself against and then also activates that inflammatory mechanism.
Now, our intuition already tells us that what happens in our mind affects our health. However, we have more and more evidence of how factors such as stress or sadness alter brain activity and weaken our immunity in the long term.
Biomarkers in our blood: suffering leaves a mark
Researchers have discovered something striking that should make us think. When a person deals day after day with worry, sadness or anguish, something changes in his body. It is enough to do a blood test to see how the biomarkers of inflammation rise.
The body reacts to emotions with a negative valence. If that mood drags on for days or weeks, the brain perceives it as something the body needs to act on. Then the described inflammatory process is activated. If we do not find relief, if this anguish is constant, our immune system will weaken.
A weak immune system associated with psychological discomfort causes the risk of heart disease to rise. Diabetes or even autoimmune diseases can also appear.
What emotions are the ones that “sick” us?
Indeed, there are emotions that weaken your immune system and chances are, at this point, you want to know what they are. Although somehow, you may sense them. We’ve all been through those times when life hurts a little more, feeling more vulnerable. Moments when emotions weigh us down, they turn us off, making us sick.
- Persistent sadness is an example.
- Also the anguish, the feeling of threat and fear and the obsessive idea that everything is going to go wrong.
- The constant stress that accompanies us for weeks.
- Anger, irritability and frustration are states that, maintained over time, weaken our body’s immune response.
The researchers suspect that there may be a relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the immune system. That link would be governed by a complex hormonal system, such as the pituitary, hypothalamic and adrenal glands.
Therapy not only allows us to better manage complex states such as anguish, sadness or stress, but also improves our physical health and the body’s immune response.
Talking and venting emotions is a first step in reducing the impact of what worries or worries you.
There are motions that weaken your immune system, but that action can be reversed
Unregulated emotions can make us sick. We know that they heighten our sensitivity to colds, the flu, or that immobilizing headache. It also increases the risk of heart attack, if, for example, someone maintains a lifestyle dominated by stress and constant pressure.
Now the good news is that there are mechanisms to reduce this inflammatory response of the organism. And which are they? One of them is psychological support. In a study conducted by San Diego State University, an analysis of 56 randomized clinical trials with more than 4060 participants was carried out.
It could be seen that cognitive behavioral therapy improved patients’ immunity. The index of cytokines or proinflammatory markers are reduced. Likewise, and beyond the clinical approach itself, it never hurts for each one to take their own strategies whenever he is gripped by uncomfortable emotions.
Some techniques, such as problem solving, allow us to face what worries us so that this knot does not drown us day after day. Relaxation, meditation or basic emotional regulation strategies from day to day will always allow us to reduce and better channel these situations. The key is to act and not let go. We have to handle the pain of life so that our health does not take away.