Effects of Negative Mood on Health
A negative mood, whether it’s anger, stress, depression, or fear, has a significant detrimental impact on our health. This is because these emotions often cause and/or increase inflammation, susceptibility to infection, cancer, damage to heart and blood vessels, frequency and lethality of irregular heartbeats, sensitivity to pain, lung symptoms and diseases, time for wounds to heal, and relationship difficulties.
Research shows that this is due to a link between certain parts of our brain and our immune systems via a complex hormonal system that is controlled by the hypothalamic and pituitary glands in our brains and adrenal glands that sit on top of our kidneys.
What occurs in our bodies at a physiological level when we experience these negative emotions helps to explain why the detrimental effects listed above occur. The initial response of our body to anger, for example, is a release of adrenaline which causes a number of changes in the body. These include an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and flow of blood to our muscles. This is part of the commonly known ‘fight or flight’ stress response. Glucose is released into our bloodstream to provide energy for our muscles.
Adrenaline also enlarges the pupil of the eye to sharpen our vision, increases hearing, and expands the lung capacity to breathe in extra oxygen that may be needed. All these responses are normal and return to normal baseline levels once the negative emotion passes, without long-term health consequences. The health consequences above occur when the body is exposed to these acute stress responses regularly and over time. When these negative emotions become chronic, there is increased risk of more serious mental health issues such as depression. Eventually the fight or flight response can lead to a fight, flight or freeze response where the individual can ‘give up’.
So, what is the antidote to all these health effects? An interesting study gives us a clue. Scientists measured a key immune system cell, called immunoglobulin A, measured when healthy volunteers were asked to recall feelings of compassion or anger. Simply recalling feelings of compassion significantly increased IgA levels, whilst an angry experience caused a six-hour suppression of these important immune system cells.
Therefore, the key to reducing the impact of negative emotions on your health is to do anything you enjoy and that makes you feel positive. In addition, be proactive and try to reduce stress levels by mitigating stressors in your life. This could be as simple as allowing yourself more time to get to work. In previous articles (for example here, here and here), I give suggestions on how you might achieve both stress reduction and positive feelings. In future articles I will discuss in more detail how chronic negative emotions leads to more serious mental health issues such as depression. I will also look at the ‘upsides of stress’, surprisingly they do exist!
See more Holistic Health Collective articles here.
