Immune System Boosted in Those Who Find Meaning in Grief [balance]

Search for Meaning Boosts Immunity

Immune System Stronger in Those Who Find Meaning in Grief

Written by Daniel J. DeNoon

April 30, 2003 -- Seeking -- and finding -- positive meaning in grief may boost the immune system.

There's a lot of evidence that stressful life events can harm a person's health. There's also a lot of evidence that people are capable of amazing resilience. Many people thrive after surviving tragedy.

Why? Many things must be involved. Julienne E. Bower, PhD, and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, looked at one of them. They studied 43 women who had just lost a close relative to breast cancer. They also looked at a set of important immune cells -- natural killer cells -- in the women's blood.

Bower and colleagues found the women who placed the most importance on cultivating relationships, personal development, and striving for meaning in life had the most active immune cells. And over a four-week period, women who came to see these goals as more important had improved immune function.

"This study supports the possibility that a generalized form of goal engagement -- one relevant to more intrinsic goals, such as finding meaning -- may have positive [effects on immunity]," Bower and colleagues write in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

The women were divided into two groups at the beginning of the study. Every week, one group wrote about the death of their relative while the other group wrote about non-emotional things such as their plans for the day. Women who wrote down their feelings did not have better immune function.

The next step will be to uncover the ways in which "finding meaning gets under the skin and influences the immune system," Bower says in a news release.

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