Your Mommy was right: have a nice day and you’ll be HEALTHIER.
A new study reports that there is indeed a connection — and that if you can have a day when you emulate the much-ridiculed smiley face you’re apt to have fewer doctor bills and even live a bit longer.
Scientific American.Com reports:
Whereas previous research had linked depression with an increased incidence of health problems, the new findings reveal that people who report more everyday happiness are healthier overall than their less joyous counterparts in a number of key ways. In particular, happy men experienced lower heart rates throughout the day, indicating good cardiovascular health.
The study doesn’t mention it, but there are a slew of things people can do to be happier: turn off radio and cable talk shows and visit The Moderate Voice several times a day instead…to mention two of the VERY obvious ones. But we digress:
Andrew Steptoe and his colleagues at University College London studied the emotional and physical well-being of more than 200 middle-aged Londoners recruited for the Whitehall II psychobiology study in the mid-1980s. The participants underwent stress tests and blood pressure and heart rate monitoring, and they were asked to record their feelings of happiness throughout their daily lives. The team found that those people who reported feeling happier more often also had on average lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is linked with hypertension and type II diabetes, than did people who recounted fewer moments of happiness.
Note the role of diabetes: it has increased in recent times and is usually attributed to less healthy diets. Will future research indicate an increased role for stress in diabetes?
So imitate the face above. You may live longer…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.