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Attitude is Everything

Kelly McGonigal is a health psychologist with some good news: Stress may not be the enemy of good health. McGonigal came to this conclusion after looking at three important health studies. In the first study, researchers at the University of Wisconsin asked 30,000 adults how much stress they had experienced. They also asked whether the participants thought this stress was harmful to their health. Eight years later, one group of participants was 43% more likely to have died— the people who had a lot of stress and believed that stress was bad for them. Those who had a lot of stress but did not believe it was harmful actually had the lowest risk of dying!

According to McGonigal, the way we think about stress is important. In fact, our mind and attitude can have beneficial effects on our health. In a study at Harvard, researchers taught participants to believe that signs of stress—a faster heartbeat, for example—were the body's way of preparing them to meet a challenge. Under stress, most people's blood vessels become narrower. That makes it harder for blood to flow, but the blood vessels of the study participants stayed open and relaxed, simpty because they thought about stress in a different way.

McGonigal also points to a study of the connection between stress and human contact. Researchers from the University at Buffalo studied people who had experienced very stressful events. Surprisingly, if they had spent a lot of time helping others, they had no increased risk of dying. It seems that enjoyable activities such as giving a friend a ride or babysitting a neighbor's child can help us stay healthy even under stress.

enemy (n) the person(s) on the opposite side in a struggle

participant (n) a person who volunteers for a research study