When it comes to surviving breast cancer, which becomes deadly after it reaches a certain stage, and is much more treatable when it is caught early on, it seems that one’s mental state may be key to surviving this disease. It may be the difference between permanent remission and recurrence, and life and death, so it’s important to heed this research.
While I am totally convinced that the mind and body connection has a LOT to do with our overall health, the likelihood of us contracting flu and colds, and our overall energy levels and health levels, I am not sure that mood can actually prolong one’s life once they have been diagnosed with end stage breast cancer.
However, I’m strongly leaning in the direction that good mood and high spirits can make for a very good ally in your body’s chemical functions as they relate to cancer. In other words, I think that positive attitudes and a general enjoyment of life experiences leads to great survival rates of anything – cancer – major traumas – and just about everything else.
So, it does not surprise me at all that a recent study showed that women who reported depression symptoms while battling later stage breast cancer happened to live longer if they reported those feelings of depression lifting.
Conversely, the group of women who reported that their depression symptoms had worsened or were not really getting better or improving slowly, lived on average about two years less than the women whose depression had lifted.
That right there is something pretty special, and it’s certainly an argument for getting whatever kind of treatment is necessary to lift bad moods if you are a cancer survivor, that’s for darn sure.
There have been a lot of studies that show depression actually suppresses the immune system, and makes it more difficult to heal from illness. A good mood simply means that you have a very strong “constitution” and that you are probably more likely to bounce back from things that would be more likely to strike people down who do not have a positive outlook on life.
I feel like I sort of saw this happen with a woman earlier on in my life. She got breast cancer, and shortly thereafter, when she really started to have to have the serious treatments, her husband, who she was crazy about, had an affair and left her.
I feel like that really took away some of her happiness and her will to live, and she was always a very upbeat person. I always wonder what would have happened had he stayed by her side, and things would have remained the “status quo”. But alas, we’ll never know.
