Why you may feel depressed and anxious when you're ill – and how to cope with it
Retrieved on:
Tuesday, January 16, 2024
All have one thing in common: they can make you feel miserable.
Key Points:
- All have one thing in common: they can make you feel miserable.
- These illnesses often come with fatigue, lack of appetite and concentration difficulties.
- To be successful, they need to rally other immune cells as well as several organs of your body.
- But you can also be more sensitive to negative stimuli, which can easily make you sad and anxious.
That means that the psychological experience of sickness is not just triggered by your brain or the pathogen itself – it seems to be unleashed by your own immune system.
Making people sick for one day
- Researchers have actually shown that such feelings can be brought about without a true pathogen being present.
- My research group, and a few others in the world, purposely activate the natural immune defences of healthy and young volunteers, without using a pathogen.
- And the sickness feelings, including the strong negative emotions that were triggered only a few hours earlier, also subsided within this time frame.
Why do we feel miserable during infections?
- Well, even if you are not fully aware of it, fighting a pathogen requires an incredible amount of energy.
- Both the activity of your immune cells and the increase in body temperature take a heavy toll.
- Do not feel guilty or worried about feeling miserable – it’s only natural.
- And by the way, if you feel miserable in the days following a vaccination… Don’t worry – it similarly means your immune system is at work.
Julie Lasselin receives funding from the Swedish Research Council (vetenskapsrådet), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and the Osher center for Integrative Health at Karolinska Institutet.