Here's some good news for those of you like me who find happiness a hard thing to hang on to:
LONDON - You've heard it before: to avoid a heart attack don't smoke, eat right and exercise. But it also may help to be happy, a new study says.
Even if you're grumpy by nature, just try to be cheerful.
Researchers at Columbia University rated the happiness levels of more than 1,700 adults in Canada with no heart problems in 1995.
After a decade, they examined the 145 people who developed a heart problem and found happier people were less likely to have had one.
The study was published online Thursday in the European Heart Journal.
Fake it
"If you aren't naturally a happy person, just try acting like one," said Dr. Karina Davidson of Columbia University Medical Center, the paper's lead author. "It could help your heart."
Davidson and colleagues used a five-point scale to measure people's happiness. They then statistically adjusted to account for things like age, gender, and smoking.
For every point on the happiness scale, people were 22 percent less likely to have a heart problem. The study was paid for by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and others.
1 comment:
Yes! I never read such a study (I don't read studies, as I distrust most of 'em) but this is simple *a priori* knowledge, or plain common sense! It should be obvious to anyone who has lived for a bit on this planet that one's mental attitude definitely affects health. Morose, depressive, anxious people who carry around disproportionate *Weltschmerz* do seem to get sick more often.
Eliz, you and I have often discussed how mean people seem to live forever (can't get rid of 'em!) while the more sensitive ones succumb earlier.
There's a theory bandied about (don't ask where I heard this, I don't know) that all of us have little malignant cells sprouting in us all the time, that could turn into cancer...and very often, they go away because the particular immune systems fight them off and destroy them before they can get a good head-start and turn into a tumor.
I have got to believe that part of this procedure is very much aided by a positive attitude. There's a mind/body health connection that I'm not sure science can ever truly isolate, identify, and quantify---but whether this is all true or not, it's sure nicer to be cheery than to be a "Gregory Grim," (a Walker Percy term.)
As for faking it, well, that's probably easier said than done, but certainly worth a try!
Post a Comment