Writing Away Asthma Symptoms

Using mind over matter -- writing about stressful experiences -- has been shown to reduce symptoms in individuals suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and asthma, researchers say.

Writing in The Journal of the American Medical Association, North Dakota State University scientists who looked at 112 patients with the disorders found patients with mild to moderately severe asthma or rheumatoid arthritis who wrote about traumatic life experiences had clinically relevant changes in health status after four months of writing about the stressful events.

"These gains were beyond those attributable to the standard medical care that all participants were receiving," the authors write. "It remains unknown whether these health improvements will persist beyond four months or whether this exercise will prove effective with other diseases."

The researchers found that four months after treatment, asthma patients in the experimental group showed improvements in lung function and rheumatoid arthritis patients in the experimental group showed improvements in overall disease activity.

The authors write that a growing amount of literature suggests that addressing patients' psychological needs produces both psychological and physical health benefits. Expressive writing is one such technique that has been used successfully in several controlled studies.

"This is the first study to demonstrate that writing about stressful life experiences improves physician ratings of disease and objective indices of disease severity in chronically ill patients," researchers say.