Maybe it's my cheerfulness!

How pathetic that my first post in days is about having a cold. Or, more accurately, not having a cold.

Thanks, Boing Boing, for this fabulous news:

Good moods prevent colds?
A new scientific study suggests that people who have a positive outlook are less likely to catch colds. Psychologist Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University exposed more than 300 healthy adults to a cold virus and interviewed them about their emotional state. Those with "generally positive outlooks... reported fewer cold symptoms than were detected in medical exams." From Science News:
"We need to take more seriously the possibility that a positive emotional style is a major player in disease risk," Cohen says. Those who displayed generally positive outlooks, including feelings of liveliness, cheerfulness, and being at ease, were least likely to develop cold symptoms. Unlike the negatively inclined participants, they reported fewer cold symptoms than were detected in medical exams. The new study, which appears in the November/December Psychosomatic Medicine, replicates those results and rules out the possibility that psychological traits related to a positive emotional style, rather than the emotions themselves, guard against cold symptoms. Those traits include high self-esteem, extroversion, optimism, and a feeling of mastery over one's life. Link