Dr. Alan Rozanski

And that could be either perceived stress or it could be stress that's situational, like unemployment, for example, or marital stress or things like that.

We look at optimism versus pessimism.

That's a mindset that has been studied.

There's newer data with gratitude and so forth.

There is some data in terms of the ability to forgive, in terms of forgiveness trait.

People have more, you know, a tendency to be able to either let go or the people hold on.

And the data there isn't significant.

as strong as with other things, just because it hasn't been studied.

But there is data that show that people, for example, who score low on forgiveness actually have higher heart rate and blood pressure reactivity.

Like when you're exposed to a stress, their blood pressure and heart rate may go higher.

So there's some tantalizing data there that is probably not so good.

But you can also argue just psychologically, you know, in terms of quality of life.

A person who can let go, I say, a difference between, let's say, a Teflon personality and a Velcro personality.

Are you able to let go?

Or, you know, you hold on to things.

The more we're able to let go, we don't have the resentments and other things living in our mental furniture, so...

And for that reason alone, it's good to work on things like forgiveness.

So...

This goes back to the very early part of my career when I started to look at the effects of chronic stress.

And I came to the realization, wow, I have this opportunity having come from an academic background and having these tools available through imaging and through all the other things and also being aware of what everybody else was doing to say we can be very objective in terms of what is healthy and unhealthy.