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by Source: www.cfah.org
January 1, 1999
While your natural tendency may be to forget about the highly stressful events of your life, focusing on them briefly may help lessen the symptoms of chronic illness.
Reporting in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a team of researchers report that writing down their feelings about the most stressful event of their lives significantly improved the symptoms of asthma and arthritis patients.
The study involved 48 asthma patients and 35 arthritis patients who were asked to write about the most stressful event of their lives for 20 minutes, three days in a row. A comparison group of 22 asthma patients and 21 arthritis patients completed a similar exercise, writing instead about their plans for the day. Both of the groups were evaluated at two weeks, two months and four months.
After the four month period, 47% of the patients who wrote about their feelings showed clinical improvement, while only 24% in the comparison group showed improvement. Specifically, the asthma patients who wrote about a stressful life event had a 19%increase in lung function (there was no change in the comparison group). The arthritis patients who wrote about a stressful life event showed an average of 28% improvement in the severity of their illness (again, the comparison group showed no change).
Researchers still say it is unclear why this exercise produces positive health results, but they do cite a previous study done on healthy participants. Those is good health completed the same exercise and while they found it upsetting, they did have improvements in things like heart rate, blood pressure and immune function. The study of writing down one's feelings for those with chronic health conditions is the first one of its kind. It is hypothesized that writing about a stressful event may help change the way the event was originally handled, thereby increasing the ease with which new stressful events are handled.
Time will tell how long the health boost will last for those in the study group and if these results will apply for those with other chronic conditions. It does seem amazing that the exercise took a total of only 60 minutes and produced such dramatic results. This research certainly suggests that it might be health-wise for each of us to take a few minutes to write down a few stressful feelings – and begin to feel better!
Material for this article taken from www.cfah.org
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