From Dr. Joseph Mercola:
Writing about stressful life events helped reduce 
symptoms of asthma and rheumatoid arthritis in patients with these chronic illnesses. The effects of the writing exercise were still evident four months later and resulted in clinically meaningful improvements in patient symptoms.
The new findings add to a growing body of evidence linking mental health to physical well-being. Although researchers are not sure how this "expressive writing" technique leads to improvements in health, they speculate that it may help people better cope with stress, which can take a deleterious toll on health.
On average, asthma patients who wrote about their most stressful life event showed a 19% improvement in a specific measure of lung function, while control asthma patients showed no change. Rheumatoid arthritis patients were found to have a 28% reduction in symptoms, whereas control arthritis patients did not improve. Ventilation of negative emotion, even to an imaginary reader, seems to have helped these patients acknowledge, bear, and put into perspective their distress.
I know what it is like to have asthma.
There were'nt many things to treat it when I was small. The only thing that helped was to be able to relax. Sorting out your thoughts is calming and somehow you feel you are getting rid of part of the stress by putting it down on paper. Also when your hands are stiff with arthritis it helps to keep them moving.
Posted by: Linda | July 27, 2006 9:43 PM | Permalink to Comment