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| Sunday, 30 June 2002 |
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A good social life cures common cold, says a new report. And if your friends are still in town for summer, you know what to do Those with the widest range of social contacts had milder colds
They have found that people with the most diverse social contacts are the least affected by the common cold virus. Not only were gregarious people less likely to catch a cold but if they did, the infection was less severe. Dr. Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, have no idea why outgoing people appear to be more resistant but suggest that greater self-esteem may promote robust physical health in addition to mental health. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association they describe how they dropped the common cold virus into the noses of 276 healthy adults aged between 18 and 55. Those with the widest range of social contacts had measurably milder colds, could blow their noses more effectively and passed on less virus than the people who had fewer groups of friends. The scientists point out that it is not the actual number of friends that make the difference but the number of different social groups to which the individual belongs. It emerged that people who had six or more different types of social relationship based on different friends, families and sporting and cultural activities had four times less risk of getting a cold than people with one to three different types. "These results suggest that social network diversity may be associated with more than one disease process the extent of viral replication and a process that modulates the production of signs and symptoms of illness," Dr. Cohen pointed out. by Amanda Hall |
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| Produced by Lake House |
A
full social life is no longer to be sneezed at. After exhaustive research,
scientists in the United States of America have come up with an
interesting discovery to combat the common cold which afflicts milliones
the world over.
