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The last episode of Alone in the Wild is tonight. The incredible Ed Wardle continues his journey into the Yukon wilderness, while we watch his beard grow and his stomach shrink and ask ourselves why he ever agreed to do this. I’ll never read an adventure book the same way again.

One thing that’s amazed me throughout is Ed’s psychological resilience. In the last episode he convincingly told us (I paraphrase):

My chest hurts, my legs hurt, I’m hungry and sore. My pack is rubbing against my back. But I’m happy. I’m happy.

In his award-winning book Stumbling on Happiness, the psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains one reason for this:

We might think of people as having a psychological immune system that defends the mind against unhappiness in much the same way that the physical immune system defends the body against illness. This metaphor is unusually appropriate. The physical immune system must strike a balance between two competing needs: the need to recognise and destroy foreign invaders such as viruses and bacteria, and the need to recognise and respect the body’s own cells.

If the physical immune system is hypoactive, it fails to defend the body against itself and we are stricken with autoimmune disease. A healthy physical immune system must balance its competing needs and find a way to defend us well – but not too well.

ps. More prosaically, for those wondering why Ed’s so obsessed with salmon, the answer is here.

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The dreadful Guardian Saturday magazine reports on a landmark 1976 psychology study:

Two American researchers, Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin, gave a group of elderly nursing home residents a plant to care for. Another group in the same home were given plants, but told that nurses would take care of them.

Three weeks later, those who had cared for their own plants reported much higher levels of happiness than those who hadn’t; 18 months later, their health and levels of activity had improved and, most significantly, fewer of those residents had died.

The author concluded from this that caring for others, even for plants, can make us happier - and even extend our lives.

I conclude that taking part in pseudo-scientific experiments can make us happier - and even extend our lives.

Perhaps someone can explain to me why my conclusion isn’t valid?

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