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A recent study published in the journal of Psychosomatic Medicine has revealed that individuals who are overall healthy and rated themselves as vigorous were less likely to suffer from poor immunity. They were also less vulnerable to common cold as compared to the ones who considered themselves unhealthy. The co-author of the study, Sheldon Cohen from Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg PA said in his earlier research that indicating yourself as unhealthy is a predictor of bad health in adults. Cohen adds, "Strikingly, these associations remain significant even after accounting for the effects of objective indicators of health such as physical exams, medical records and hospitalizations", reports Medical News Today.

The study says that the association stems from the fact that the people who considered themselves healthy were the ones who actually followed a healthy lifestyle or had better emotional well being. These people are always less likely to fall sick. In this latest study, Cohen and his colleagues want to further investigate that when younger, healthy adults rated themselves, could it also predict their immunity response and if the results could shed some light on their lifestyle or socio-emotional factors. In their study, only 2% participants called themselves fairly healthy and none of the subjects believed that they had poor health. The researchers say that this response was expected as the study was conducted amongst healthy adults, as reported by Medical News Today.

The participants of the study were exposed to common cold virus and were kept in close observation for the next 5 days to see if they contracted the illness. Around 1/3^rd participants developed the cold. However, the participants that rated fair, good or very good health were twice as likely to catch the cold than the ones who called themselves of excellent health, says Medical News Today.