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| Writing about stressful events in your life can improve your health, say the investigators in a study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association. The study involved 58 patients with asthma and 49 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Half the patients in each of the groups were told to write about the most stressful event of their lives. The other half—who served as controls—wrote about emotionally neutral topics. The physical health of all patients was assessed at baseline, two weeks, two months and four months. Asthma patients were evaluated by spirometry; RA patients were evaluated by a rheumatologist according to a detailed protocol. After four months, asthma patients in the experimental groups had significant improvement in lung function. Likewise, RA patients had a significant reduction in the severity of disease. Overall, 47% of patients who wrote about stressful events showed clinical improvement, whereas only 25% of the controls showed improvement. The investigators noted that the gains in the experiment group could not be explained by any medical treatment the patients had received. Why does writing help? Joshua Smyth, M.D., a co-author of the study, says that the patients who showed the most physical improvement also showed the most increase in organization or structural elements in the writing sessions. "We take that to mean they are making sense of events, processing events perhaps understanding their emotions and synthesizing them. Those are the individuals who show the health benefit." Smyth explains: "This kind of writing tends to organize the traumatic event, to break it up into discrete parts that seem manageable." To read the entire article, visit the JAMA site. |
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links: Script of a radio interview with Dr. Joshua Smyth on his writing study Healing Words: Emotional Expression and Disease Outcome Fascinating editorial by David Spiegel, M.D. from the same issue of JAMA. Spiegel suggests that how one responds to the stress of the illness may account for some variability in the physical outcome of the illness, and he briefly reviews research that supports this view. Writing as Therapy RealAudio interview with Dr. Joshua Smyth and author Louise DeSalvo. 
To read more about the effects of stress in CPT II deficiency, visit
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How can writing accomplish
all this?
