Your Mindset and Your Health

Your mindset is a very powerful thing…so powerful in fact that it can have a tremendous impact on our physical health. Most of us know or at least have felt that there is a link between our mind and our health from our own experiences. It’s the degree that our mindset can impact our health that may really surprise you. Imagine if you live with chronic stress or live in a negative mindset. There is a pretty clear link between stress and our physical health and new research is suggesting that stress causes an increase in cortical levels. This causes damage to our arteries, a possible explanation of why stress increases our risk of cardiovascular disease. But, it’s not just stress, it is depression as well, according to Dr. Michael Freneau, professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Birmingham in England. Depression doubles an otherwise healthy person’s heart attack risk. One of the most frequently discussed studies connecting your mindset to your susceptibility to getting sick was conducted by Dr. Cohen, Carnegie Mellon University. Some healthy individuals were exposed to the cold virus and very interesting things happened! Dr. Cohen showed that individuals who exhibited a positive emotional style or mindset had a greater resistance to getting the cold.