Progress Daily

In 2001, Deborah Danner, analyzed the handwritten autobiographies of 180 nuns of mean age 22, and compared the positive emotional content of the writings with the nuns’ health six decades later. It turns out that sisters who used words like “joy” and “thankful” lived up to 10 years longer than did those who expressed negative emotions. Michael Marmot, Andrew Steptoe, & colleagues studied the emotions and health of more than 200 middle-aged Londoners in their daily lives. They found that people who reported that they were pretty much happy every day were verifiably healthier. Happiness is associated with reduced neuroendocrine, inflammatory and cardiovascular activity. Their work was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

The scientists put their volunteers — men and women of white European origin aged 45-59 — through laboratory stress tests and monitored their blood pressure and heart rate over a working day. Saliva samples were taken to measure the volunteers’ cortisol content. Cortisol is a stress hormone related to conditions such as type II diabetes and hypertension.

There was a 32% difference in cortisol levels between the least and the most happy subjects. Happy subjects also showed lower responses to stress in plasma fibrinogen levels, a protein that in high concentrations often signals future problems with coronary heart disease. Finally, happy men had lower heart rates over the day and evening, which suggests good cardiovascular health.

The researchers also used an established method to measure psychiatric disorders that are known to predict coronary heart disease. So they were able to control for psychological distress — and they found that health-related biological factors were independently related to happiness. In other words, people aren’t just happy because they are healthy, they are healthy because they are happy.

In 2005 researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore showed that laughter is linked to the healthy function of blood vessels.

The researchers showed volunteers funny or stressful segments of movies and found that those that provoked laughter apparently caused the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate to increase blood flow.

“Happiness Is the Best Medicine,” by Rowan Hooper

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 25th, 2007 at 10:06 am and is filed under Happiness, Biochemistry, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.