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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

Keep calm and carry on, for the sake of your long-term health


Penn State

Reacting positively to stressful situations may play a key role in long-term health, according to researchers.
In a study measuring adults' reactions to stress and how it affects their bodies, researchers found that adults who fail to maintain positive moods such as cheerfulness or calm when faced with the minor stressors of everyday life appear to have elevated levels of inflammation. Furthermore, women can be at heightened risk.
Inflammatory responses are part of the body's ability to protect itself via the immune system. However, chronic -- long-term -- inflammation can undermine health, and appears to play a role in obesity, heart disease and cancer.
These findings add to growing body of evidence regarding the health implications of affective reactivity -- emotional response -- to daily stressors. The researchers report their results in a recent edition of Health Psychology.
Nancy Sin, postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Healthy Aging and Department of Biobehavioral Health, Penn State and her colleagues showed that the frequency of daily stressors, in and of itself, was less consequential for inflammation than how an individual reacted to those stressors.
"A person's frequency of stress may be less related to inflammation than responses to stress," said Sin. "It is how a person reacts to stress that is important."
Sin's findings also highlight the important -- but often discounted -- contributions of positive affect in naturalistic stress processes.
"Positive emotions, and how they can help people in the event of stress, have really been overlooked," Sin said.
In the short-term, with illness or exercise, the body experiences a high immune response to help repair itself. However, in the long term, heightened inflammatory immune responses may not be healthy. Individuals who have trouble regulating their responses may be at risk for certain age-related conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, frailty and cognitive decline, Sin said.
"To our knowledge, this paper is the first to link biomarkers of inflammation with positive mood responses to stressors in everyday life," said Jennifer E. Graham-Engeland, associate professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State.
A cross-sectional sample of 872 adults from the National Study of Daily Experiences reported daily stressors and emotional reactions for eight consecutive days. Blood samples of participants were obtained during a separate clinic visit and assayed for inflammatory markers.
Subjects were interviewed by phone every day for eight consecutive days. They were asked to rate their positive and negative emotions, as well as whether or not they encountered stressors. This enabled researchers to evaluate a person's emotional response on days when they experience stressors, and compare it to days when they do not.
"We calculated reactivity scores to see how participants generally reacted to stressors," Sin said. "Then we used it to predict two markers of inflammation."
The researchers used several different types of stressors, among them were arguments and avoiding arguments at work, school or home; being discriminated against; a network stressor, i.e., a stressful event that happens to someone close to the subject; and other stressors.
"We examined both positive and negative affective reactions to stress and compared the effects of stress exposure with responses to stressors," Graham-Engeland said. "Little is known about the potential role of daily stress processes on inflammation. Much of the relevant past research with humans has focused on either chronic stress or acute laboratory-based stress -- methods that do not fully capture how people respond to naturalistic stressors in the context of daily life."
Data came from the second wave of the Midlife in the United States Study, a national survey designed to investigate health and well-being in midlife and older adulthood. Its goal is to expand understanding of how daily mood and stressful events may relate to inflammation and health.
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Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Penn State. The original article was written by Marjorie S. Miller. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


On Travel

I am not much an advocate for traveling and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part Only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home?

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Travel is a fool’s paradise.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us or we find it not.

No man should travel until he has learned the language of the country he visits. Otherwise he voluntarily makes himself a great baby-so helpless and so ridiculous.








As Befits a Man
BY LANGSTON HUGHES


I don't mind dying —
But I'd hate to die all alone!
I want a dozen pretty women
To holler, cry, and moan.

I don't mind dying
But I want my funeral to be fine:
A row of long tall mamas
Fainting, Fanning, and crying.

I want a fish-tail hearse
And sixteen fish-tail cars,
A big brass band
And a whole truck load of flowers.

When they let me down,
Down into the clay,
I want the women to holler:
Please don't take him away!
Ow-ooo-oo-o!
Don't take daddy away!



“Nothing, not love, not greed, not passion or hatred, is stronger than a writer’s need to change another writer’s copy.”Arthur Evans

“It’s so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won’t be awake for another five hours, but I can’t help feeling that we’re sharing this clear and beautiful morning.” Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand—relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.” Osho




In time we hate that which we often fear.”William Shakespeare

 



“Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving” Kahlil Gibran





“It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.”Helen Keller


Mala fide: In bad faith.From Latin mala fide, from malus (bad) + fides (faith). Earliest documented use: 1561.
  


“Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.”

THE BOOK OF FUNNY, ODD AND INTERESTING THINGS THAT PEOPLE SAY



Animal Excuses

My cat unplugged my alarm clock.

A buffalo escaped from the game reserve and kept charging the employee every time she tried to go to
her car from her house.

A skunk got into the employee's house and sprayed all of his uniforms.

"My cow bit me."

"I tripped over my dog and was knocked unconscious."

I totaled my wife's jeep in a collision with a cow.
  
I hit my arm against the hopper, and got flea bites.
  
This is for the cut on my hand, but I took the stitches out myself. However, I am filing on account of the watchdog biting me and on account of a hurt I got in a fall in the paint shop.

 "My boyfriend's snake got loose and I'm afraid to leave the bedroom until he gets home."
  
My monkey died.