Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Live Longer, Be Happy

Want the secret to living longer? Be happy.

It's a little more complicated than just this; but happy people do tend to live longer.

A new study, just released in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found a connection between happiness and long life. Researchers found that people reporting feeling the happiest also cut their risk of dying by 35% when they were compared against those who ended up being the least happy. This study looked at nearly 4,000 adults, aged 52-79 and followed them for 5 years. And regardless of their overall health, how educated they were, whether they were married, and how wealthy they were, the happiest were the least likely to die during that 5-year period.

Although experts can't say why they got these results, they do point out that other studies are finding out that positive outlooks can benefit overall health. As a side note giving us a glimpse into how we work as humans, the researchers in this study also found out that overall, most of us tend to be less happy when we wake up and most happy around 7 p.m.

So, as the saying goes, to get healthy, "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

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