Why Your Attitude Affects Others (and Your Health!)

Emotional and mental outlooks lead to physical outcomes!

When I was trying to decide whether to undergo radiation treatments, I was rather obsessively focused on finding out whether radiation would cause frustrating or potentially debilitating side-effects like fatigue. (Short answer now that I’ve been through it: yes.)

Because I really, really wanted to predict how bad it might be, I couldn’t help myself: I put on my research-nerd hat, read lots of articles, and tried to understand some of the results of the complex studies done by research scientists over the years.

What I found was astonishing: whether someone has potentially debilitating physical side-effects of radiation is due more to their emotional attitude than almost any other factor!

In one key 2018 study in the journal Health Psychology, the researchers tried to understand why radiation fatigue affects some people so differently than others. Why, for example, does debilitating physical fatigue sometimes last for only a few weeks after treatment, where in other cases it persists for many months? The researchers looked at every conceivable factor: whether the patient had chemo as well as radiation, other pre-existing conditions, age, family history, and so on. Only two factors were statistically significant over time: obesity (which impacts estrogen levels in the body) and the person’s attitude!

The researchers found that if the patient “catastrophized” about their fatigue (Oh my gosh, this is horrible, I’m so tired) it lasted far longer! They were much more likely to have their fatigue for months or even years. On the other hand, if they had the attitude of Yeah, this is a pain in the neck but I’ll get through it and move on, they were much less likely to have the fatigue at all after a few weeks!

Their emotional and mental outlook led to a purely physical outcome. I thought that was fascinating! And can I tell you just how much seeing that study convicted me about my hyper-focus and worry about whether I would have debilitating fatigue or not?! As soon as I read that study, I took off my research-nerd hat, shut off my computer, and said, “I think I have enough information about the possibilities now . . .  and yeah, there might be some fatigue (which there has been) but I’ll get through it fine (which I am!).”