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Health and Happiness
Cultivating Happiness is a Healthy Habit

Happiness is nothing more than a good health and a poor memory.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Health and happiness go together. Three recent research findings show the link between happiness and health. These studies add to the growing body of evidence that suggests cultivating happiness is a healthy habit.

1) Positive Emotions Fight Colds

In a recent study at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dr. Sheldon Cohen. PhD and his colleagues studied the impact of positive emotions on people's ability to fight colds and flu.

People with high scores for positive emotional style were more likely to resist colds and flu and when they did get sick, their symptoms were reduced, the study shows.

Cohen and colleagues studied 193 healthy adults aged 21-55 . Participants got medical checkups and completed surveys on their emotional style. Positive emotional-style traits included being lively, happy, or calm. Negative traits included being tense, anxious, sad, depressed, angry, or hostile. With the participants' consent, the researchers exposed them to viruses that cause colds or flu. The participants were then quarantined for five to six days to see who got a cold or flu.

People with high scores for positive emotional style were more likely to resist colds and flu and when they did get sick, their symptoms were reduced, the study shows. But people with high scores for negativity weren't especially vulnerable. This shows health and happiness are linked, although unhappiness does not necessarily cause more colds and flu.

2) People Who Report High Happiness Also Report Good Health

A study published in The American Journal of Health Promotion, compared happiness and satisfaction answers from surveys of 9,981 Australians in 2001 with their health survey responses in 2004. About 63% of people said they were happy most or all of the time. More than 90% claimed life satisfaction. Those people were 1.6 times as likely to report excellent, very good, or good health at follow-up.

Everything else being equal, if you are happy and satisfied with your life now, you are more likely to be healthy in the future. Importantly, our results are independent of several factors that impact on health, such as smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption, and age, said lead author Mohammad Siahpush, PhD. Siahpush is a professor of health promotion at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

3) Happiness Lengthens Life

In a recent article in the Journal of Happiness Studies, Dutch social scientist Ruut Veenhoven, PhD analyzed 30 past studies and found that happiness helps bolster the immune system, prevents healthy people from falling ill, and tacks on extra years of life. Dr. Veenhoven is the director of the Happiness Data Base, a collection of research on happiness from all over the world.

Health and Happiness

Happiness does not heal, but happiness protects against falling ill. As a result, happy people live longer. The size of the effect on longevity is comparable to that of smoking or not. Scientists assess causality using long-term follow-up studies, taking initial health into account.

From all over the world and from many scientific disciplines the evidence is mounting- there is a link between increased health and happiness. You can practice happiness as a health habit or practice health as a happiness habit. Either way you will feel better in the morning!

Explore ways to be happy because your health and happiness are linked.

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