Your happiness quotient has a positive immune base — the true reflection of a strong immune system. This is because negative responses affect our immune response — while long periods of stress and negativism are evidenced to be a major risk for illness. To highlight virologist Ronald Glaser’s words, “Nobody believed, in the 1980s, what stress could do, including me.” When Glaser and his colleagues sampled blood from medical students, they found that, during a stressful exam period, they had reduced activity of virus-fighting immune cells and higher levels of antibodies vis-à-vis the common Epstein–Barr virus. This, as further research suggested, wobbles our immune system and allows the normally dormant virus to become vigorous again.
It’s being increasingly accepted that our body’s reaction to stress could subdue parts of the immune system and lead to damaging levels of inflammation over time. Research suggests that long-term work stress ‘ups’ the risk of heart disease and type-2 diabetes — to highlight just two examples. Psychoneuroimmunology [PNI] studies are also keyed to infer the levels of individual immune-cell types, or molecular messengers — viz., the stress hormone, cortisol, and the immune messenger proteins called cytokines — or, the expression of individual genes. They confirm the adverse effects of stress on our mind and body systems.
When researchers analysed the gene expression in white blood cells [WBCs] of six constantly lonely people — people who reported they felt lonely, or isolated, and frightened of other people, for over several years — and, eight people who said that they had great friends and social support — they were in for a surprise. The research identified 209, out of the 25,000 genes, in the human genome that discerned lonely people from their sociable peers — they were either regulated to produce more of a certain individual protein, or produce less. It was also reported that a principally large part of the ‘up-regulated’ genes in the lonely group had a preference for inflammatory response; while, on the contrary, most of the ‘down-regulated’ genes had antiviral effects. The latter was factual in pleasant people. The ground-breaking study has been replicated in large groups of subjects too. The synopsis has been analogous in the representation of gene expression in individuals exposed to several types of social adversity, grief and financial difficulties.
Conventional medicine demystified the affirmation that any psychological state, positive or negative, could affect physical wellness, sixty years ago. New research studies have corroborated the fact that the brain is directly wired to the immune system — with immune-related organs. For example, the thymus, gut, bone marrow and immune cells of the nervous system are connected to neurotransmitters — the basis for our mind-body interface. The results made [r]evolutionary logic. The early humans, to bring home the point, lived in interdependent, close social groups. They would have apparently faced amplified risk of viral intrusions; this probably ‘augmented’ their antiviral genes. People today remain isolated and under incessant stress — the perfect ‘ground,’ or ‘soil,’ for viral and bacterial incursions. The offshoot is their sense of response would need a total refurbishment of their genes associated with inflammation — to facilitating wound healing and averting infections. The implication is obvious — chronic and flagrant inflammation damages our body’s tissues, while increasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, among others.
Daniel Goleman, the noted psychologist-author, puts the whole idea in context, “Happiness — in terms of biological bustle — is amplified activity in a brain centre that inhibits negative feelings and fosters an increase in available energy and a quietening of those that generate worrisome thought.” He suggests that there is no particular ‘shift’ in physiology, but for quiescence. This, he explains, makes the body recover more rapidly from the biology of disturbing emotions. The process offers the body overall rest, as well as promptness and enthusiasm for whatever task is at hand — including the thrust to making every effort towards an impressive set of goals.
Goleman adds that happiness is, for the most part, instituted by our genes — and, not by external reality. No matter the nature of life’s up and downs, comic or tragic, people appear to return inexorably to whatever happiness level is ‘pre-set’ in their constitution. Goleman also implies that the idea is analogous to the ‘set-point concept’ in weight control — a premise that reckons the brain is wired to turn the body’s metabolism up, or down, to maintaining a pre-set weight. This is, perhaps, one valid reason for us to take the rough with the smooth and the smooth with the rough. It’s the only way to happiness.
— First published in India First
