Emotions and health

Negative emotions (anxiety, anger and sadness-depression) are adaptive for the individual. However, there are times when pathological reactions can occur due to a poor adjustment in the frequency or intensity. When such maladjustment takes place, a health disorder can also arise, be it mental (anxiety disorder, major depression) or physical. First of all, when anxiety, sadnessdepression and anger reactions reach highly frequent or intense levels, and these are maintained through time, they tend to produce behavior changes, reducing healthy habits (physical exercise, etc.) and creating addictive behaviors (smoking, etc.) or any other that endangers health. For example, there is a positive relation between anxiety and smoking, as well as between smoking and cancer. Secondly, these emotional reactions maintain intense levels of physiological activation that can deteriorate our health if they become chronic. Hence, patients with essential hypertension, asthma, chronic headaches or different types of dermatitis, show higher levels of anger and anxiety than the general population. Thirdly, this intense physiological activation can be associated to a certain degree of immunodefficiency, making us more vulnerable to the outcome of infectious diseases (flu, herpes, etc.) or immunological ones. Last of all, the suppression or control of these emotional experience can lead to higher levels of physiological activation and a certain degree of immunodefficiency.