Sad people suffer more colds and flu

Here's another reason to get your depression under control: Sad people may get sick more often than happy people, and when they do get sick, they may experience more severe symptoms.

CNN published an article on the research, in a recent issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Here's what they wrote:

"Cohen and his colleagues found that based on objective measures of nasal woes, happy people were less likely to develop a cold.

What's more, when happy folks did develop a cold, their self-rated symptoms were less severe than would be expected based on objective measures."

And the opposite was true, too. Depressed people were experienced their colds as worse-regardless of the objective symptoms:

"... people with negative dispositions were not at increased risk of developing a cold based on objective measures -- though they did tend to get down about their symptoms."

If you are a person dealing with long-term depression-like I am-this article may sound like one of those overly optimistic "pull yourself out of depression with positive thinking" pieces I hear all the time. But I don't think so. I take it as another good reason to keep on working on our depression in whatever ways we can.

At another level, I enjoy seeing the researchers' mental gymnastics. In essence, the study is basically saying sick people get sick more often and feel worse. It wouldn't be news to say that though.