4. Common Cold
Negative emotions and mental tension can also impair your immune function, which in turn can make you more vulnerable to infectious diseases like colds.
A team of researchers has conducted an experiment in which they exposed 420 volunteers to the common cold virus, quarantining them afterward to see if they got sick. The study results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the 2004 International Congress of Behavioral Medicine, showed that participants who dealt with higher levels of stress were indeed more susceptible to getting the virus and becoming sick.
In fact, according to some data, being under chronic stress for more than one month but less than half a year can double a person’s risk of a cold compared with those experiencing mental tension from time to time.
