Your Health: Low-Stress Life May Be Best Way to Prevent Colds

Morning Edition, January 11, 2007 · Colds are caused by viruses, but when a nasty one spreads around the office or through the family, why do some people get sick and others don't? -- Some add a jolt of wheat grass or green tea to their smoothies. Others choose megadoses of vitamin C. -- The best evidence suggests there is no magic elixir that will keep you from getting a cold. So, is there anything — besides washing your hands frequently — that you can do to protect yourself? --- Researcher Sheldon Cohen at Carnegie-Mellon University is focusing on the role of stress. "After we administered the questionnaires," says Cohen, "we exposed the people in the study to one of five viruses that cause the common cold." --- Cohen's team then tracked the volunteers for six days and found that those who had reported higher levels of stress were twice as likely to catch a cold as those who were less stressed out. --- This correlation has held up in two follow-up studies. --- Cohen has also evaluated long-term stressors such as marriage problems or the loss of a job. --- "So the longer the stress lasted," says Cohen, "the greater the probability that the participants exposed to the virus would actually catch a cold." -- Taking stress out of their lives is not something most people can do on demand; unresolved disputes don't disappear at will.