The dynamic relationship between emotional and physical states: an observational study of personal health records

Recently, there has been increasing interest in preventing and managing diseases both inside and outside medical institutions, and these concerns have supported the development of the individual Personal Health Record (PHR). Thus, the current study created a mobile platform called "Mind Mirror" to evaluate psychological and physical conditions and investigated whether PHRs would be a useful tool for assessment of the dynamic relationship between the emotional and physical conditions of an individual.

Mind Mirror was used to collect 30 days of observational data about emotional valence and the physical states of pain and fatigue from 20 healthy participants, and these data were used to analyze the dynamic relationship between emotional and physical conditions. Additionally, based on the cross-correlations between these three parameters, a multilevel multivariate regression model (mixed linear model [MLM]) was implemented.

The strongest cross-correlation between emotional and physical conditions was at lag 0, which implies that emotion and body condition changed concurrently. In the MLM, emotional valence was negatively associated with fatigue (β =-0.233, P<0.001), fatigue was positively associated with pain (β =0.250, P<0.001), and pain was positively associated with fatigue (β =0.398, P<0.001).

Our study showed that emotional valence and one's physical condition negatively influenced one another, while fatigue and pain positively affected each other. These findings suggest that the mind and body interact instantaneously, in addition to providing a possible solution for the recording and management of health using a PHR on a daily basis.