Relaxation Quickens Healing

Be cool. A new study has claimed that people who are relaxed can heal up to twice as quickly as those who are very stressed. 

Researchers, led by Prof. John Weinman of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, have carried out the study and found that being relaxed could be the key to healing quickly. For their study, the researchers inflicted small "punch" wounds on healthy volunteers whose levels of life stress were assessed using a standard questionnaire. 

Changes in levels of the stress hormone cortisol reflected the differences in healing speed. A similar pattern emerged from an analysis of pooled data from 22 studies by different research groups examining stress and wound healing, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported. 

Previously, the scientists showed that wound healing can be enhanced by psychological help aimed at addressing emotional stress. Prof. Weinman said: "My overall research interests are focused on investigating and assessing how patients perceive illness and treatment, and how this affects the way they respond to and recover from a range of physical health problems. 

"These studies focus specifically on how the life stresses people experience can impact on their ability to recover from different types of wound, such as those caused by surgical procedures and by different medical conditions, including venous leg ulcers. "I hope that these findings can now be used to identify psychological interventions to help speed up the recovery and healing process."