frannyan | Optimism: it could keep you healthy

Optimism: it could keep you healthy

by Jean Baker, MS, RD

A healthy mental outlook can be as good for your body as it is for your mind, according to a study reported in a recent issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.*

In the mid 1960s, researchers from the Mayo Clinic interviewed more than 700 people to determine how they viewed life experiences and categorized them as optimists, pessimists, or somewhere in between. When the study participants were tracked down 30 years later, researchers found that the optimists of the group had outlived the pessimists by a significant margin.

During the original assessment, people were classified as pessimists if they tended to internalize problems (e.g., "it's all my fault"), or if they saw their problems as never-ending obstacles to happiness. Optimists, on the other hand, saw problems as temporary inconveniences, and they tended to realize that some situations were outside of their personal control. The greatest percentage of people in this study were categorized as "mixed" because they tended to be optimistic about some situations and pessimistic about others. But those who regularly viewed life as a constant struggle fared worse over time than those who had a more hopeful view of life.

The authors of the study say that optimists may be less prone to depression and more likely to seek and receive medical treatment than people who are less hopeful about their life situation. A habitually gloomy outlook on life may also have a detrimental effect on the immune system, making a pessimist more likely to get sick.

The scientists admit that the tendency to think like an optimist or pessimist is probably a fixed part of a person's personality, but assisting some medical patients to "rethink" how they approach problems may help them feel better physically as well as emotionally.

* Maruta T, Colligan R, Malinchoc M, Offord K. "Optimists vs pessimists: survival rate among medical patients over a 30-year period." Mayo Clinic Proceedings, February 2000, Volume 75, pp 140-143.

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