Your Mood Can Boost or Weaken Your Immune System

Studies show that frowns hamper the immune system while smiles give it a boost.

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We often think of medicine passively. You get the treatment—pills, shots, procedures—and it fixes you up. No personal investment needed. Like a car wash, you simply show up and ride the conveyor belt, emerging shiny and clean.

A growing body of research indicates that your mind plays a profound yet overlooked role in your health. Thoughts and feelings can boost wellness or chip away at health, even with the best treatments modern medicine can offer.

Beyond medical treatments, there are many factors that contribute to immunity, including age, genetics, sleep, diet, exercise, social interaction, and mood. This last factor is underappreciated as we hustle through demanding days.

Research suggests that frowns hamper the immune system, while smiles provide a boost—affecting both natural defenses and even the body’s response to a flu shot. This mind-body dynamic is especially relevant given surging depression rates in the United States.

Like a booster shot, the benefits of a positive mood are many, according to the American Psychological Association.

Research shows that happier individuals tend to enjoy these advantages:

• Stronger immune response
• Less disease
• Decreased pain
• Better prognoses
• Lower mortality rates

Now, you may be thinking: “But I haven’t been feeling very positive lately.” The good news is it’s never too late to turn your outlook and, consequently, your health prospects around.

Even brief bumps in happiness—for example, watching a comedy, doing positive journaling, or attending a yoga session—contribute to boosting health markers. These include better parasympathetic nervous system activity (“rest and digest” instead of “fight or flight”), lower cortisol levels(the “stress hormone”), greater natural killer (immune cell) counts, lower inflammation, and less mucus.

Mood can “turn on” or “off” a number of key biochemical reactions, according to a body of research.

Every time you smile, your brain is at work, not just expressing happiness, but also promoting your well-being. It activates what is known as the endogenous opioid system—our body’s intrinsic mechanism for creating and regulating feelings of pleasure and pain relief. Unlike synthetic opioids, which can be addictive and dangerous, these natural compounds promote health.

Cultivating a positive mood helps bring the body to a regenerative state that counters corrosive stressors. Feel-good neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin that come from being in a good mood generate relaxation by engaging the vagus nerve, part of the parasympathetic nervous system. Relaxation allows the body to repair itself while chronic “fight-or-flight” stimulation wears it down. Importantly, relaxing also benefits cardiovascular health, which affects most diseases.

The enemy of your enemy (stress) is also your friend. Feeling good curbs stress-related hormones such as cortisol and catecholamines. At high loads, these compounds both increase inflammation and blunt the production of immune cells and antibodies.

5 Ways to Use Positivity to Strengthen Immunity

You could take a load of prescriptions to fight infection, but a positive mood could be the most natural antidote, with little downside.

Here are a few ways to boost your immune system through a good mood:

1. Make Time for Comedy

As the adage goes, “laughter is the best medicine.” Time dedicated to comedy and humor may counteract a difficult day while simultaneously bolstering immunity.

When you’re feeling down, it can be hard to pull out of it. Stand-up specials, funny movies, or learning some jokes inject absurdist joy. Look for the funny side of things (even very frustrating situations can be hilarious when viewed from the right angle).

2. Pause to Savor Joy

Taking time to appreciate positive moments has the benefit of increasing their value. By savoring these experiences, people can enhance positive emotions and prolong the emotional benefits derived from positive experiences.

From relishing the taste of a favorite meal to appreciating a beautiful sunset, savoring offers a simple yet powerful tool for cultivating a more positive and resilient mindset.

3. Be Present Through Mindfulness

Mindfulness complements savoring by training nonjudgmental attention on the current moment rather than getting tangled in regrets, worries, or other negative tunnels of thought.

Mindfulness encourages a non-reactive and accepting stance toward thoughts and feelings, fostering a more balanced perspective. Engaging in mindfulness practices, such as meditation and yoga, has been associated with fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression, increased feelings of calm, clarity, and contentment, and enhanced immunity.

4. Try Journaling

As humans, a sense of integrity is important to us. Journaling brings clarity by funneling thoughts onto paper.

Journaling about gratitude is a great way to boost awareness of the positive aspects of our lives and help us focus on what we’re doing well in life. By reflecting on how we live up to our values (self-congruence), we can increase our determination to do better. A sense of self-congruence has been found to be great for health. The alignment of behavior with personal goals has significant physiological implications, especially for immune function.

5. Embrace Conscientiousness

Decades of research have shown that lowering overly negative moods is most effective when paired with cultivating conscientiousness—the tendency toward diligence, organization, and detail orientation.

Several tools could help to encourage conscious living. For one, it pays to take time to plan out activities and reflect on how well we achieved our goals. Aids such as checklists, sticky notes, and time-tracking apps may help with organization. Planning ahead by time-blocking—using an app such as Google Calendar or a planner to map out how we will spend the hours of days to come—also facilitates better awareness of time. You could even schedule time each week to reflect and make your next schedule.

Sometimes life gets messy. When that happens, you can make use of what clinical psychology calls “coping cards,” which include “if-then” statements (“if X happens, then I will do Y”). Coping cards can help plan in advance for how to best handle challenges.

In the intricate dance between mind and body, positivity is a step we can all master. So make a move toward a more positive mindset and watch your health follow your lead.