Warm People Likely to Keep Cold at Bay
Staying positive through the cold season could be your best defense against getting ill, new study findings suggest. In an ___1___ that exposed healthy volunteers to a cold or flu virus, researchers found that people with a ___2___ sunny character were less likely to fall ill. The findings, ___3___ in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, build on evidence that a “positive emotional style” can help get rid of the common cold and other illnesses. Researchers ___4___ the reasons may be both objective as in happiness boosting immune function and subjective as in happy people being less troubled by a scratchy throat or runny nose. “People with a positive emotional style may have ___5___ immune responses to the virus, ”explained lead study author Dr. Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “And when they do get a cold, they may interpret their illness as being less severe.” Cohen and his colleagues had found in a ___6___study that happier people seemed less susceptible to catching a cold, but some questions remained as to whether the emotional trait itself had the effect. For the new study, the researchers had 193 healthy adults to complete standard measures of ___7___ traits, self-perceived health and emotional “style”. Those who tended to be happy, energetic and easy going were judged as having a positive emotional ___8___, while those who were often unhappy, tense and hostile had a negative style. The researchers gave them nasal drops containing either a cold virus or a particular flu virus. Over the next six days, the___9___reported on any aches, pains, sneezing or congestion they had, while the researchers collected ___10___ data, like daily mucus production. Cohen and his colleagues found that based on objective measures of nasal woes, happy people were less likely to develop a cold.
A.volunteers
E.personality
I.published
B.experiment
F.aches
J.previous
C.objective
G.generally
K.fluD.believe
H.style
L.different
1.B 2.G 3.I 4.D 5.L 6.J 7.E 8.H 9.A 10.C
