Daily HealthBeat Tip

Good thoughts

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I�m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Thinking about your personal values seems to fight stress. Researcher David Creswell of UCLA found these thoughts affect stress hormone levels.

Creswell had some people think about values they considered important and others think about values not important to them. All then gave a speech and did mental arithmetic while people critiqued them � a task which typically raises the stress hormone cortisol. The study in the journal Psychological Science was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

People who affirmed important values had lower cortisol responses, indicating less stress.

Creswell says the values are a personal choice:

"It doesn�t matter what values you�re affirming as long as they�re important to you. So for example if your value of being a good father � or being a good tennis player � is important, these are great domains to affirm." (11 seconds)

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 22, 2005

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