The source of this article is the Seattle Times: http://tinyurl.com/b6xov

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.

Research shows optimists are blessed with better health

By Julia Sommerfeld

Seattle Times staff reporter

MARK NOWLIN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Have you ever looked on the bright side? Detected a silver lining? Are your 
glasses half-full or otherwise rose-colored?

Or do you take a dim view, fix on the dark clouds and brace for the worst?

There are optimists. And then there are the people who want to strangle them.

Which camp you fall in may have all kinds of consequences for your health — 
and that goes beyond your risk of getting throttled. Dozens of studies 
imply a bleak outlook somehow invites bleak outcomes, some as serious as a 
sluggish immune system, heart disease, even early death. New findings make 
matters worse by adding a pair of dreaded neurological diseases to the 
things a pessimist has to worry about.

Self-help books and folks who plain don't know what else to say when faced 
with a friend's misfortune have pushed the so-called power of positive 
thinking for decades.

"That's the pop psychology version of it, but there's a lot of hard science 
looking at how psychological processes affect our very biology," says 
Bonnie McGregor, a clinical psychologist and researcher at Seattle's Fred 
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

A growing area of research suggests the connection between attitude and 
health has more to do with the ravages of stress than the triumph of happy 
thoughts. That means learning to cope with anxiety may be more important — 
or at least more helpful — than trying to look on the bright side.


The bad news

Not to be negative, but let's start with the bad news.

The most recent entry in the why-are-they-doing-this-to-me category of 
scientific research is the finding that pessimists are more likely to 
develop dementia than their blithe counterparts. A sister study found they 
also have a higher risk of Parkinson's disease.

"Psychologists love to blame pessimism for health problems, but I never 
really believed it until now," says Dr. Walter Rocca, a professor of 
neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., and a 
researcher on both studies.

Rocca and his colleagues followed thousands of Minnesotans who took a 
personality test in the 1960s. Those who scored highest on pessimism were 
about 30 percent more likely to show dementia up to four decades later. 
Another batch of Minnesotans revealed an even stronger link between 
pessimism and Parkinson's — a 50 percent higher chance of developing the 
degenerative disorder.

Both studies were presented last month at the annual meeting of the 
American Academy of Neurology. They don't show causality, Rocca stressed, 
just an association. In other words: "Pessimists, this doesn't mean you are 
doomed."

The studies weren't designed to answer the why question, but they still may 
provide a clue. The researchers also looked back at the Minnesotans' levels 
of anxiety on those personality tests and found a similar link between 
anxiety scores and the brain diseases.

It could be that a propensity for pessimism, anxiety and these diseases 
share a common risk factor — a gene or some quirk of brain chemistry.

Another possibility, Rocca says, is that a pessimistic outlook leads to 
more anxiety, which can disrupt levels of stress-related hormones or 
otherwise knock the body's endocrine or nervous systems out of whack. This 
much is known. Then, theoretically at least, this could trigger some 
cascade of events that damages the brain and ends in Parkinson's or dementia.

It's premature to start testing whether anti-anxiety drugs could prevent 
these diseases, Rocca says. But it's not hard to imagine why a pessimist 
might suffer more from stress than an optimist.


Worried sick

Psychologists define optimists as people who tend to expect the best; 
pessimists, meanwhile, assume the worst is yet to come. Some combination of 
childhood experience and genetics is thought to construct this frame 
through which we see most events.

It's a spectrum, with most people falling in the middle, though Americans 
tend slightly to the optimistic side. We were founded by idealists after 
all; pessimists likely took one look at the boat and said: That'll never 
make it.

That kind of attitude gives pessimists a double whammy of anxiety. First, 
they interpret events as more stressful. McGregor, the Hutch psychologist, 
describes a scene where a friend is late for a dinner date. An optimist 
might think: Oh good, I've got a moment to catch my breath. But a pessimist 
might fret: Did she forget? Was she in an accident? Does she think my time 
isn't as valuable as hers?

Second, when faced with stress, pessimists often don't cope as well.

Optimists have a curious habit of seeing stresses as challenges and forging 
ahead. Pessimists obsess or give up, so daily stresses build up.

There's a huge body of evidence showing that chronic stress is rough on the 
body. It weakens the immune system and contributes to higher blood 
pressure, migraines, sleep deprivation, stomach problems, even skin breakouts.

When you think about it this way, it's no surprise that earlier research 
out of the Mayo Clinic found that pessimists are more likely to die 
prematurely.

Still, there are limits to the power of positivity.

In a study last year in the journal Cancer, Australian researchers followed 
179 lung-cancer patients and found optimists didn't live any longer than 
pessimists.

McGregor argues curing cancer is a bit much to ask of optimism. "Most 
chemotherapy can't stop advanced lung cancer, why would they expect a 
psychological construct to have that effect?"

Telling people to think happy thoughts may not be a particularly useful way 
to fight cancer, McGregor says, but reducing the anxiety from negative 
thoughts might be.

The effects of stress on the body are so profound they may be key to 
developing an effective immune response to a breast-cancer vaccine once one 
becomes available.


A role in vaccines?

Late this summer, McGregor plans to recruit more than 200 women at risk for 
breast cancer to test her theory. She'll run groups of women through a 
10-week cognitive-behavioral stress-management program where they'll learn 
coping, reframing and relaxation skills aimed at reducing stress. During 
the study, she'll measure their levels of the stress hormone cortisol, 
known to impact the immune system. And at the end of the therapy, they'll 
get the hepatitis A vaccine, and then their antibody response will be 
measured.

The question is whether reducing stress levels boosts the immune system 
enough to make the vaccine more effective. That's an important issue for 
the scientists at work developing an experimental breast-cancer vaccine 
because many of the women who'd be candidates for the treatment are likely 
to be under a great deal of stress.

McGregor suspects based on some of her earlier research that the therapy 
may nudge some of the women slightly up the optimism scale. But you don't 
have to be a born-again optimist for your body to reap the benefits of 
reduced anxiety.


Pessimism's upside

Julie Norem, a psychology professor at Wellesley College, thinks it's a 
disservice to try to turn pessimists into optimists.

First of all, there's nothing psychologically wrong with pessimists. In 
fact, they've got some positive attributes. They make better comedians, for 
one. They never expect to win so they're less likely to become gambling 
addicts. And some research conducted in nursing homes even bears out the 
observation that the more cantankerous you are, the longer you live. Or 
maybe it just seems that way.

"It doesn't make sense to try to tune everybody to the same frequency," 
says Norem, author of "The Power of Negative Thinking." "Can you imagine 
everyone being optimistic, all the time? That's depressing."

She studied how successful pessimists cope with anxiety and found there's 
something adaptive about their approach to life. She coined the strategy 
"defensive pessimism," which means they mentally rehearse worst-case 
scenarios. From the outside, it may look like obsessing, but they are 
really turning their anxiety into actions that help them avoid pitfalls.

When a pessimist finds out she has to give a public speech, for instance, 
she may think: This is going to be a disaster. I'm going to trip on the way 
to the podium, spill my note cards and someone in that group will ask a 
question I can't answer.

A defensive pessimist makes good use of that anxiety, Norem proposes. She 
prepares by not wearing high heels, stapling her notes together and asking 
colleagues to help brainstorm questions the other team might ask.

In a series of experiments, she asked college students to perform tasks 
including math problems or throwing darts. But she trained pessimists in 
optimistic strategies, things like muscle relaxation and positive imagery. 
She found that when she took away their fretting, they didn't do as well. 
They weren't prepared and felt more stressed.

"If you are a pessimist, trying to think like an optimist is like wearing 
clothes that don't fit. It's uncomfortable and makes you even more 
anxious," she says.

More important than striving for a cheery disposition, she says, is coping 
in the way that's comfortable. And for a pessimist, that may mean thinking 
unhappy thoughts. Whether this could actually have health benefits is not 
known. But that may be beside the point. Because, according to Norem, 
"Never in the history of the world has saying to someone 'cheer up' 
actually worked."

Julia Sommerfeld: 206-464-2708 or [log in to unmask]

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

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