Hot People Have A Lower Risk Of Getting Covid, Per A New Study
Looks do matter, apparently, and it seems that your looks might also have an impact on your health. A new study suggests that attractive people may have a better shot at avoiding coronavirus.
A study was conducted at Texas Christian University of 79 women and 80 men. Researchers gathered their blood tests, then 492 other volunteers were recruited to rate the attractiveness of the men and women participating in the study based on their photos.
New Study Suggests That Good-Looking People Have a Better Immune System
It turns out that the people who were found most attractive were the ones whose blood samples showed strong immunity and higher levels of phagocytosis, which is "the process by which specific white blood cells ingest foreign particles." That's just a fancy way of saying that the body is better able to fight off bacterial illnesses.
This was especially true for the men participating in the study. The men who had "high functioning" killer immune cells, which protect the body from viral infection, were rated more handsome than the men who had "low functioning" killer immune cells. In other words, the better looking the guy, the more likely he was to have a strong immune system and thus less likely to contract coronavirus.
The same wasn't necessarily true for the women, though. Men rated women as attractive or not regardless of the level of immune cells in their body.
It's not so much the looks themselves that makes these men more immune to coronavirus. It's that a highly functioning immune system can make people appear more attractive. “The features that humans universally perceive as attractive may provide cues to unobservable qualities possessed by a target that impact fitness, including health and immune function,” the study reported.
Besides, it's a biological tendency to choose a mate based on looks, as more beautiful people tend to be healthier and better suited to procreate successfully.
"It is also possible that links between attractiveness and health may be obscured in modern humans, given that human mate preferences were forged before the advent of modern medicine," the study said.
So when you're looking for a long-term partner, you have a good reason to search for someone attractive.