You read that right! According to one study, attractive people have stronger immune systems. Experts believe we are drawn to appearances because our brains seek out healthy partners to be with. True, we all know that physical appearance is the most important factor in selecting a partner, followed by personality.
Summer Mengelkoch of Texas Christian University in the United States led a team of scientists investigating the potential link between physical attractiveness and the immune system’s ability to fight all types of infections. They attempted to demonstrate this phenomenon in a study published in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B.”
In the study, scientists photographed 153 adult participants with no makeup on their faces and neutral expressions as they faced the camera. Then, in an online survey, 492 people were asked to rate their attractiveness. Men who were deemed more attractive by women had more effective natural killer cells in their bodies, which can destroy virus-infected cells.
Beauty was linked to slower growth of a bacterium responsible for food poisoning and localized infections in their plasma. There could be a link between how appealing you find a person’s features and how well their immune system functions, which is ultimately based on your attraction to a future life partner’s potential good health.
However, this is the first study of its kind, and the findings merit further investigation, especially since such a hypothesis would imply that beauty is objective, independent of cultural and societal considerations, and unrelated to personality.
This result is surprising because the most attractive women and men also had the highest rates of phagocytosis, a process that plays a critical role in the destruction of certain disease-causing bacteria.
“In other words, the more appealing you are, the more likely you have a strong immune system. Scientists believe that advances in modern medicine may have altered the game when it comes to physical preferences. With modern medicine, infections are not as deadly as they used to be, so perhaps it’s okay if people lower their standards and start to give people who are less attractive a shot,” said Mengelkoch.
Source: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2021.2476
