Sadness and Your Health

It seems I have been interested in emotional themes for sometime now; anyway, it's cool understanding some stuffs about emotions.

We checked out Happiness last time and learnt a lot of interesting stuffs about happiness. We'll be checking up on Sadness this time.

Sadness differs from depression. While it's normal that one feels sad sometimes, it's not normal when it gets to depression. Anyway, we'll talk about depression sometime later.

Photo Credit: emojiisland.com

When one is sad, especially intense sadness, it compromises the immune system, makes such person prone to inflammatory diseases. It causes the body to increase the production of stress hormones (cortisol and adrenaline). This increases one's risk for high blood pressure and high blood sugar. It also affects one's appetite, eating habits (sadness increases stress on the brain, causing the brain to need more energy than usual, and results to one taking so much sugary foods and junk foods) and sleep quality. Some persons experiences symptoms like chest pain. In a severe case, it could result to heart failure and stroke.

Like I mentioned earlier, it's okay to feel sad sometimes, but one should avoid letting such sad feelings to linger for longer than normal. When one feels sad, one should allow himself/herself come back almost immediately from such sad feelings. Bad things happen, painful stuffs happen, but don't loose yourself over them. Let's see these useful tips -

• Identify the reason why you're sad. Deal with this cause of sadness by expressing yourself. Someone got on your nerves? Let the person know. If this is not the case, then you should share how you feel with someone - a friend, family. But it should be someone who would understand how you feel and would be able to give you some positive support. The wrong person could aggravate the feeling of sadness you have or wouldn't offer any positive support to you. This is where I would call for people to try to understand how others feel, detect when they've got something bad going on inside and try give them some positive support. I'll likewise say this: you surely can't please everyone, but don't be the cause of someone else's sadness, except of course, if you're on the right part.

• It's okay to cry when you feel grief. At least, it's cool to cry at that moment, then let the sadness away. Crying helps increase the production of endorphins, which helps to relax and calm you down.

• Therapy for sadness? That's to be happy. To be happy, do things that'll increase the production of the four happiness hormones (Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin ad Endorphins) in your body. I wrote about them in some previous posts on Happiness and You.

Sometimes, sadness isn't that much of a bad feeling. Surprised? You shouldn't. Some good sides to sadness includes;

• helping one have a good memory;

• It sometimes acts as a motivation. Sometimes, people need to feel some sadness to motivate them to achieve some goals;

• Sadness can also help one have a better sense of judgement and decision making. It could arrest emotional excitement and help one think more critically and make better decisions that will ensure happiness.

So, sadness is not entirely bad, just like I believe that nothing is entirely bad in life, what makes a thing bad is when it's under-utilized or over-utilized. In the case of sadness, it shouldn't be over-utilized.