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Right Attitudes Keep Colds at BayA good attitude may not fend off all of life8217;s woes, but it can help keep a cold at bay, a new study s...

Right Attitudes Keep Colds at Bay
A good attitude may not fend off all of life8217;s woes, but it can help keep a cold at bay, a new study says.

The cold is a good model for testing theories about the effect of mental states on illness, said Dr Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist and lead researcher for the study, which was published in the Psychosomatic Medicine.

8220;Colds are one of the few diseases you can actually give people8221; without violating ethical rules, Cohen said.

People who were most likely to describe themselves with words like happy, pleased and relaxed came down with colds at one-third the rate of the people who were the least likely to use those words, the researchers found. In addition, the people with more positive scores were more likely to have healthy habits, like exercising and getting enough sleep, and they had lower levels of hormones associated with stress. The researchers also found a difference in the way that people who caught colds handled them. Those with especially negative emotional attitudes were more likely than the positive people to report symptoms that were more severe than the objective measures of the infection indicated, Cohen said.

A Peril to the eyes, Around the Neck
Go ahead, loosen that tie. You could be saving your vision.

A study published in The British Journal of Ophthalmology found that wearing a tightly tied necktie had a significant effect on blood pressure within the eye, which is the most important known risk factor for the development of glaucoma, a disease in which the optic nerve is progressively damaged.

The study also suggested that wearing a tight tie could throw off the findings of tests for glaucoma during optical exams.

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In the study, 20 healthy men and 20 men with the most common form of glaucoma had their intraocular blood pressure measured wearing open shirt collars. The pressure was taken again after they wore a tightly knotted tie for three minutes, and finally three minutes after the tie was loosened.

The pressure increased in all the men8217;s eyes. It went up by an average of two millimetres of mercury in the healthy men, and by four millimetres in the glaucoma patients, and by significantly more in a few patients.

Speculating that the tie might raise blood pressure by constricting flow through the jugular vein, the researchers concluded that wearing a tight necktie should be considered a risk factor for glaucoma, particularly for men with thick necks or those who wear ties every day.