Opt4health Blog: April 2020

Thursday, 23 April 2020

Positive Affect and Stress

POSITIVE AFFECT AND STRESS

Exactly How Your Good Mood Can Combat Stress

By Elizabeth Scott, MS

Updated June 05, 2019

Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD

"Positive affect" refers to one’s propensity to experience positive emotions and interact with others and with life’s challenges in a positive way. Conversely, "negative affect" involves experiencing the world in a more negative way, feeling negative emotions and more negativity in relationships and surroundings. These two states are independent of one another, though related; someone can be high in positive and negative affect, high in just one, or low in both. Both states affect our lives in many ways, particularly when it comes to stress and how we handle it.

Positive Affect and Stress

Positive affect is associated with other characteristics of people who tend to be happier, like optimism, extroversion, and success. However, positive affect isn’t just another by-product of a happy, less stressful life, it’s an influencing factor. A positive affect can bring lower levels of stress on its own. It’s not just that those who are optimistic and successful extroverts experience positive affect because they have so much to be happy about, and they just happen to be less stressed. You can experience greater resilience toward stress simply by cultivating positive affect or taking steps to get into a better mood more often.

The Broaden and Build Theory

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson has extensively researched the effects of positive affect on stress and has come up with a model of how positive affect interacts with resilience, known as the "broaden and build" theory of positive psychology. Fredrickson and others have found that when we give ourselves a lift in mood, this can expand (or broaden) our perspective so that we notice more possibilities in our lives, and this enables us to more easily take advantage of (to build upon) these resources.

These resources include the following:

Physical Resources: This includes energy, stamina, fitness, health, and overall wellness. For example, if you’re in a good mood, you may have more motivation to go to the gym and build your physical resources.
Psychological Resources: This includes the ability to choose more optimistic perspectives, pull yourself out of rumination, or withstand hectic schedules without experiencing burnout, for example. If you’re experiencing more positive affect, for example, you might be less prone to dwelling on the negative and may focus on possibilities in your life.
Social Resources: This means more supportive relationships, friends who will give great advice if you ask, lend you a shoulder to cry on, or bring you a casserole if you are going through a difficult time. If you’re chronically upset, you may drive away those who could be supportive in your life, whereas if you’re exuding positive affect, you may become more of an appealing friend.

These increased resources can lead to greater resilience toward stress. Basically, it can work as an "upward spiral" of positivity where positive affect begets more resilience toward stress and more positive affect.

Unfortunately, negative affect can work in the same way. This is why it really helps to cultivate positive moods and pleasure in life; it's not just something that will lead to some good feelings in the moment, but it can be a path to less stress and a happier life in general. It is well worth the effort of increasing behaviours that lead to positive affect, and fortunately, increasing positive affect is quite simple if you make the effort.

How to Increase Your Positive Affect

Positive affect can be developed and cultivated. While affectivity is somewhat inborn, meaning that some people are simply born with a greater propensity for being in a good mood as part of their personality, there are many things you can do to get into the habit if experiencing positive affect more often in your life, and making your good moods even better.

Many of these things involve changing our thought patterns and changing the experiences we put ourselves in. Here are some of the things you can do to increase your experience of positive affect.

Maintain a Gratitude Journal: Research shows that writing about what you are grateful for in your life can bring about greater levels of positive affect, and this benefit lasts for quite a while.
Indulge in Life’s Pleasures: If you plan pleasurable experiences into your life, you can be constantly increasing your experience of positive affect and the benefits that come with it. Just remember to add new pleasures on a regular basis so you don’t become bored.
Engage in Hobbies: Many of us don’t have as much time for hobbies as we’d like, but it’s important to make time. This can not only increase your positive affect, it can take your mind off of what may be stressing you, and leave you with a sense of accomplishment.
Practice Loving-Kindness Meditation: Meditation, in general, is great for stress management, but the loving-kindness meditation is a particularly sweet treat, especially in that it can increase your levels of positive affect and help you feel less stressed.
Exercise—And Make It Fun! Physical activity is a powerful stress reliever as well, and there are so many forms of exercise you can engage in, you can find several activities that are fun as well. Dancing, yoga, cycling, walking with a friend? Think about what might be fun for you, and do it!
Remember and Savour Positive Experiences: Research confirms what you probably instinctively know already: that actively savouring positive experiences can prolong the happiness you experience from them! And this can increase positive affect as well, leading to greater enjoyment of life and more resilience toward stress.

Disclaimer:

The content of this blog is for informational purposes only. The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any question you may have regarding a medical condition. If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor immediately. Opt4health does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, physician, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned on the Opt4health blog. Reliance on any information provided by Opt4health, Opt4health employees, other contributors appearing on the blog at the invitation of Opt4health, or other visitors to the blog is solely at your own risk.

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Monday, 6 April 2020

Autoimmune Disease and Stress: Linked?

AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE AND STRESS: IS THERE A LINK?

Posted: July 11, 2018, 10:30 am, updated August 22, 2018, 4:31 pm

Robert H. Shmerling, MD
Faculty Editor, Harvard Health Publishing

A new study has raised the possibility that stress may cause autoimmune disease, such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, because it found a higher incidence of autoimmune diseases among people who were previously diagnosed with stress-related disorders.

I have patients who heard about this research and are saying, “I knew it!”

But before we accept a potential link between stress and autoimmune disease, let’s look at some details of the study and consider how we define the terms “autoimmune disease,” “stress,” and “stress-related disorder.”

What is autoimmune disease?

These are fascinating and mysterious conditions in which the body’s immune system “misfires” and attacks its own tissues. There are scores of autoimmune diseases out there. Some of the most well-known are rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, and type 1 diabetes.

In some cases, a condition is labeled “autoimmune” based on conventional wisdom or expert consensus rather than hard science. And I’ve seen the term “autoimmune” used loosely to apply to any condition of unknown cause in which inflammation is present or the immune system appears to be active. But an infection could do the same thing. So perhaps some of these conditions now considered to be autoimmune will turn out to be chronic infections by an organism we’ve not yet identified.

What is stress?

A common definition of “stress” is any experience that causes tension, whether physical, psychological, or emotional, especially if it sets off the “fight or flight” response (during which the adrenal gland releases adrenaline, leading to rapid pulse and breathing, and increased blood pressure). This serves us well if chased by a lion. But it’s theorized that persistent stress (such as worry about finances, mental or physical health, or interpersonal relationships) could lead to chronic disease such as high blood pressure or autoimmune disease.

What causes stress for a person is highly individual. A common example is having to speak in public. Some people find it easy to give a speech in front of a crowd; for others, however, the exact same situation may feel nothing short of dreadful and causes worry for weeks in advance. A stressful experience can also be something quite positive, like getting married, or walking into a room on your birthday where friends and family are hiding. Surprise!

What is a stress-related disorder?

There is a big difference between stress and having a “stress-related disorder,” in which a particular, well-defined condition or disease develops following a specific and intensely stressful event. A dramatic example is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in which a serious physical or psychological injury leads to a host of problems including distressing, intrusive memories of the traumatic event; memory problems; apathy; and irritability.

Exploring the connection between stress and autoimmune disease

In this new study, researchers analyzed more than 100,000 people diagnosed with stress-related disorders and compared their tendency to develop autoimmune disease at least one year later with 126,000 of their siblings, and another million people who did not have stress-related disorders.

The study found that individuals diagnosed with a stress-related disorder

· were more likely to be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease (about nine per 1,000 patient-years* who had stress-related disorders, but only about six per 1,000 patient-years among those without stress-related disorders)

· were more likely to develop multiple autoimmune diseases

· had a higher rate of autoimmune disease if younger.

*Patient-years is an expression that combines how many and for how long people are assessed in a study. If the frequency of a condition is 9 per 1,000 patient-years, that means 9 people would develop the disease among ,1000 patients monitored for 1 year, or among 500 patients monitored for 2 years, and so on).

A particularly important observation was that, for those with PTSD who were being treated with an SSRI (a type of antidepressant), the increased rate of autoimmune disease was less dramatic. While these observations are intriguing, they don’t tell us why or how a stress-related disorder might provoke or cause autoimmune disease.

The usual caveats about observational studies

It’s important to emphasize that a study of this type (called an observational study) cannot conclude that stress-related disorders actually cause autoimmune disease. There could be other explanations for the findings. For example, it is often impossible to identify a precise date that an autoimmune disease or a stress-related disorder began. So, despite the researchers’ requirement that the autoimmune disease be diagnosed well after the stress-related disorder, it’s possible that the autoimmune condition was already present before the stress-related disorder was diagnosed. If that was the case, the stress-related disorder could not have caused the autoimmune disease.

In addition, it’s possible that something other than the stress-related disorder was to blame for the higher rate of autoimmune disease. For example, people who have been through severely stressful circumstances may be more likely to smoke, and smoking has been linked to an increased risk of certain autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.

One more point: this study appears to have included type 2 diabetes among the 41 autoimmune diseases it considered. Although this is the most common type of diabetes (accounting for more than 90% of all cases), it is not considered an autoimmune disease. Different results might have been noted if stricter definitions of autoimmune disease had been applied.

The mystery of autoimmune illness continues

Whether stress or stress-related disorders play an important role remains speculative. Even more important is the question of whether any particular treatment of these stress-induced psychological illnesses can prevent autoimmune disease. I look forward to a clinical trial that examines this fascinating possibility.