A good scare can help reduce inflammation. At least, according to a strange experiment carried out in Denmark: 113 patients were sent to a haunted house, in order to then measure, in their blood, characteristic markers of inflammatory diseases.
The sample is too small to draw definitive conclusions, the researchers warn. It must be said that sending thousands of people to haunted places in order to give them the scare of their lives could be frowned upon by hospital ethics committees…
Stimulate the nervous system
But the idea for this experiment doesn’t come out of nowhere. When we hyperventilate, it stimulates the nervous system while reducing inflammation. This effect has already been measured in circumstances such as exposure to cold.
Could hyperventilating because a zombie startled us have the same effect?
The researchers therefore took blood samples from these 113 volunteers (average age: 30 years), before and after their visit to the haunted house in Vejle, Denmark, as well as three days later. Of the 22 who had higher levels of inflammation — measured by a protein called C-reactive protein — as many as 18 had lower levels three days later.
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