Optimists Blessed with Better Health

 

by Julia Sommerfeld /

©2005 The Seattle Times,

Knight Ridder Newspapers.

Distributed by Tribune Media Services International.

 

Do you usually look on the bright side? Find the sliver lining? Or do you take a dim view, focus on the dark clouds and brace for the worst?

 

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There are optimists — and then there are the people who want to strangle them.

 

Optimists are people who tend to expect the best; pessimists, meanwhile, assume the worst is yet to come. Some combination of childhood experience and genetics is thought to construct this frame through which we see most events.

 

Which camp do you fall into? The answer may have all kinds of consequences for your health. Dozens of studies imply a bleak outlook somehow invites bleak outcomes — some as serious as a sluggish immune system, heart disease, even early death. New findings make matters worse by adding a pair of dreaded neurological diseases to the things a pessimist has to worry about.

 

First, the bad news

 

Recent scientific research has found that pessimists are more likely to develop dementia than their blithe counterparts. A sister study found they also have a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease.

 

“Psychologists love to blame pessimism for health problems, but I never really believed it until now,” says Dr. Walter Rocca, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, and a researcher on both studies.

 

Rocca and his colleagues followed thousands of Minnesotans who took a personality test in the 1960s. Those who scored highest on pessimism were about 30 percent more likely to show dementia up to four decades later. Another batch of Minnesotans revealed an even stronger link between pessimism and Parkinson’s — a 50 percent higher chance of developing the degenerative disorder.

 

These statistics don’t show causality, Rocca stressed, just an association. The studies weren’t designed to answer the “why” question, but they still may provide a clue. The researchers also looked back at the Minnesotans’ levels of anxiety on those personality tests and found a similar link between anxiety scores and the brain diseases.

Vocabulary Focus

silver lining (idiom) said to emphasize that every difficult or unpleasant situation has some advantage

camp (n) [kAmp] a group of people who share an opinion or similar characteristics

batch (n) [bAtF] a group of things or people dealt with at the same time or considered similar in type

causality (n) [kC:5zAliti] the relationship between cause and effect

 

Specialized Terms

neurological (adj.) 神经学的 relating to nerves and the brain

dementia (n) 痴呆 a medical condition that causes gradual worsening of the memory and other mental abilities and leads to confused behavior, especially in old people

sister study (n) 姊妹研究，指同一个主题的类似研究 a serious examination of a subject that is closely similar to or associated with another

Parkinson’s disease (n) 帕金森症 a progressive disease of the central nervous system that people develop most often after the age of 50, characterized by muscular tremors, slowing of movement, partial facial paralysis and overall weakness

Minnesotan (n) （美国）明尼苏达州人 someone from the state of Minnesota, in the United States

degenerative disorder (n) 退化型失调 an illness in which the body or a part of the body gradually stops working

保持乐观，拥有健康

杨嘉倩 译

 

你通常看事情光明的那一面吗？发现一线希望？或者你抱着悲观的看法，专注于灰暗的一面，而且做最坏的打算？

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世上有乐观的人，也有想要把他们勒死的人。   

乐观主义者倾向期待最佳状况，悲观主义者则假设坏事终将临头。我们看待大多数事情都有一个框架，据说这个框架是由一些幼年时期的经历与基因组合而成的。   

你属于哪一个阵营？你的答案可能会为你的健康带来各种不同的结果。许多研究指出，暗淡的观点会导致暗淡的后果——可能严重到免疫系统功能迟缓、得心脏病，甚至早死的程度。新的研究结果让事情看起来更糟，在悲观主义者得担心的事情上，又加上两种可怕的神经学疾病。

 

先听坏消息   

最近的科学研究发现，悲观主义者跟与他们相反的乐天派比起来更容易患痴呆。类似的一项研究也发现他们患帕金森症的风险较高。

沃尔特·若卡博士说：“心理学家总将健康的问题归咎于悲观主义，可是我一直到现在才相信这样的看法。”沃尔特·若卡博士是明尼苏达州罗彻斯特市梅医学诊所学院的神经学教授，也是前两项研究的研究员。   

若卡和同事们追踪了数千个明尼苏达州人，这些人在20世纪60年代接受一项性格测验。那些在悲观倾向方面得分较高的受试者，在之后长达40年里，有高出其它人30%的几率会患痴呆。另一群明尼苏达州人则显示悲观主义与患帕金森症的关联更强：悲观主义者患退化性失调疾病的几率较其它人高出50％。

若卡强调，这些统计资料显示的不是因果关系，而只是关联性。虽然这些研究并非设计来解释原因，不过仍可能提供了一个线索。研究员也回溯这些明尼苏达州居民在那些个性测试上的焦虑程度，发现焦虑指数与脑部疾病间也有一种类似关联。