Attitude, Stress And Blood Chemicals: Fear and anger are probably the most devastating emotions that people can experience. Not only do these emotions immobilize us or motivate us to hurtful and dangerous behavior, but they pump into our blood streams harmful chemicals that contribute to many diseases, including stress disorder, hypertension and many more. The main chemical that's over-produced by negative emotions is adrenalin. This drug is produced by our bodies to give us the ability to defend ourselves or to run away from danger. This is how, in emergency situations, people can do seemingly miraculous things. Adrenalin heightens our hearing, vision, smell and taste, and gives us amazing short-term strength and stamina. The next day, when there is no danger, we feel sluggish, muscle aches, joint pain...an adrenalin hangover.

Under normal circumstances, the few times a year we would need this drug would be of no health concern. Unfortunately, our bodies can't distinguish between an imagined emergency and a real one. So, our attitude (loosely based on what we think about) produces multiple fear and anger "emergency" situations each day, pumping unhealthy amounts of the drug into our systems. These imagined emergencies can come from watching TV drama and news, working jobs with tight deadlines or high risk, risky recreational activities, too much domestic arguing, or just thinking about things in anger or worry. If you think thoughts of danger can't produce the same body chemicals as real danger, get on a roller-coaster ride and think about what's producing those feelings in you, since you're in no real danger. Many people become addicted to adrenalin and become compelled to increasingly risk life and limb to get that high. As a minimum, the adrenalin from fear, worry, anger and stress dramatically increases our susceptibility to minor illness and deadly disease. Great! Something more to worry about!

Mental Habits And Common Illness: When we fail to discipline our minds and fall into a bad attitude and poor mental habits, we tend to be far more susceptible to common cold and flu. That's because the chemicals in our blood from stress and anger, use up our nutrients and weaken our immune systems. I remember in my twenties, being counseled by a supervisor for being sick too often. I told her that office was an extremely negative, stressful place to be and that it made sense that people were sick there. In fact, that office, with 50 employees, had a higher incidence of illness than any other in an organization of over 15,000 employees. Once I got to move out of there into a more positive environment, I was rarely ill. Why? Because negative emotions weaken our resistance to common illnesses.

Some, Eastern medicine in particular, have gone so far as to say illness is "caused" by negative emotion. Though I wouldn't go quite that far, my experience suggests there is something to be said for the a cause and effect relationship between mental attitude and illness. In my early teen years, I was feeling sorry for myself because my parents were preoccupied and didn't seem to be giving me enough attention. I contracted pneumonia and was bedridden for a few weeks. I felt strongly, even then, that I had brought it on myself. A couple years later, not having learned from my previous pity party, I was feeling the same way for about a week prior to breaking my collar bone. I remember thinking specifically, "If I had an accident, then they would have to care about me." Though it was decades later before I learned there was a large body of evidence supporting the idea, those two experiences helped me to give careful thought to the thoughts I nursed in my mind.

Thoughts, Attitudes And Deadly Diseases: It isn't just minor diseases that have a relationship to our attitudes. Mental stress, for instance, has been so strongly linked to blood pressure, stroke and heart disease that mental exercises have been prescribed by doctors to reduce stress, giving birth to the science of bio-feedback and many other lesser-known techniques. Of course, if someone were to contract a fatal disease, it would be particularly cruel to suggest they, even accidentally, brought it on themselves. This article is really for those of us who have relatively good health, to provide a way to protect our immune systems and help prevent major disease. Since some (Norman Cousins, for example) have recovered from life-threatening illness using mental attitude practices, it isn't too much of a stretch to say that the negative emotions of stress and anger can significantly increase our risk of deadly disease.

I don't know whether it was overeating, drinking, smoking or the terrible negative, fearful, angry and violent attitude of my father that killed him at age 57. I do believe my brother's death from cancer at age 51, had everything to do with attitude. Prior to that, he was the epitome of health, practicing daily aerobic exercise and toning from his early teen years on. He never smoked, ate carefully, and was never overweight. His life revolved around his wife and two children. Three years before his death, his wife left him and took the children, then in their early teens. His life stopped! He was no longer motivated and just went through the motions at his work. He never moved out of their home or redecorated. The kids rooms were left exactly as they had left them, three years before. It seemed as if he died at age 48 and it took his body three years to catch up. This isn't to say his ex was mean...we're all human! This is about how important our attitudes are and how big a role they play in our physical well-being. In fact, the relationship between thought life and physical life is so strong, our thought life is the only place we can approach recovery from addiction, depression, anxiety, pedophilia, eating disorders, past abuse...the list goes on and on. At some point, it dawns on us just how important it is to control our attitudes.

Controlling Your Attitude: Though we can't directly change our attitudes, we can indirectly change them by spending time in more positive thoughts and actions. First, we begin replacing every negative, fearful, angry thought with positive, uplifting and productive ones. Second, we replace activities that increase stress and anger emotions with more positive and productive ones, including hobbies, volunteer work, church and club activities, etc. Other actions that can improve our attitudes are exercise programs, donating money to worthy causes, letting others go first, helping neighbors and strangers, tipping excessively, etc. Over a short amount of time, this improves our experience of life and replaces stress and anger with joy and satisfaction. Once the mental habits are formed, over time, we'll discover we're not sick as much, and when we do get a cold or flu, they aren't as severe as before. About 2,000 years ago, a guy named Saul Of Tarsus said, "Be gentle and not anxious about anything. Think about things that are true, praiseworthy, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable...and you will have peace." Let me add my belief to his...and you will have health.

Glen Williams is Webmaster at E-Health-Fitness Nutrition Exercise And Illness Help and Founding CEO of E-Home Fellowship (EHF), Inc. He has counseled and helped people on life and health issues since 1987. You can comment on his articles at his Health And Fitness Forums.