Bottling Up Your Emotions May Affect Your Immunity

Bottling up your emotions can affect immunity levels, especially in teenagers, which can significantly impact their health, reveals a new study.

Teenagers who bottle up their emotions were found to have lower levels of immunity, which later affects their overall health, reveals a new study.

The study, by the University of Pennsylvania in the US, explored whether the strategies adolescents used to deal with chronic stress caused by families including cognitive reappraisal -- trying to think of the stressor in a more positive way -- and suppression, or inhibiting the expression of emotions in reaction to a stressor, affected various metabolic and immune processes in the body.

Our Mind Controls How We Interpret Emotions on Others Faces
Emotions like anger and sadness may be viewed similarly or differently by people depending on their pre-conceived beliefs, says study.

‘The coping skills teenagers develop by the time they are adolescents have the potential to impact their health later in life.’

They found that teenagers who suppressed emotions tended to have more inflammation when their immune cells were exposed to a bacterial stimulus in the lab, even in the presence of anti-inflammatory signals.

Conversely, those who used cognitive reappraisal had better metabolic measures, like blood pressure and waist-to-hip ratio.

"The results could lend support to the idea that reappraising a situation during times of stress could be beneficial," said Emily Jones, graduate student in behavioral health at Penn State.

Now Computers can Read Emotions Through Lip - Reading!
Researchers have developed a computer that has the ability to decode human emotions by studying lip pattern

"For a mild stressor, this could be as simple as re-framing a bad situation by thinking about it as a challenge or an opportunity for growth," she added.

The findings, published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, may help therapists and counselors better work with children and adolescents who live in stressful environments.

Listen, To Know The Real Emotions of Someone
People tend to read the emotions of others more accurately when they listen and don't look, finds an interesting study.

For the study, the team included 261 adolescents aged between 13 and 16.

According to Hannah Schreier, Assistant Professor from the varsity, the coping skills teenagers develop by the time they are adolescents have the potential to impact their health later in life.

Positive Emotions Predict Blood-Lipid Profiles Differently Across Cultures
Positive emotions are often seen as critical aspects of healthy living, but a new research suggests that your emotional and health outcomes may vary by cultural context.

"These changes are not something that will detrimentally impact anyone's health within a week or two, but that over years or decades could make a difference," she said.

"That may be how small changes in metabolic or inflammatory outcomes may become associated with poorer health or a greater chance of developing a chronic disease later in life." Schreier said.

Source-IANS