Happiness Can Lead To Good Health
A happy camper is a healthy camper, say British researchers who have unearthed evidence of a biological connection between a positive sense of well-being and reduced risk for disease among middle-aged men and women.
In this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the authors report that simply being happy - at work and at play - is directly related with specific bodily functions that protect against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune deficiencies, and stress-related illnesses.
"There's a direct link between how we're feeling and the biological processes which relate to illness and illness risk," says study author Dr. Andrew Steptoe, the British Heart Foundation professor of psychology at University College London.
"Biology is going to be on the side of those people who are going to be in a more positive state of mind, and it may well stand these people in good stead for their future health," he says.
Dr. Steptoe and his colleagues administered lab stress tests and standardized mental health questionnaires to more than 200 Caucasian men and women in the London area, aged 45 to 59.
Medical exams had determined that all were in relatively good physical health, with no prior history of heart disease or high blood pressure.
Blood samples were taken before and after the stress tests. The researchers then followed each participant over the course of a single routine workday, using portable monitors to automatically assess their blood pressure and heart rate every 20 minutes from the start of work until bedtime.
All the men and women kept a diary of their location and activities throughout the monitoring. They also rated how happy they felt - on a scale of one to five - at the time of each assessment. Rankings of momentary feelings of stress, control, and/or fatigue were also noted.
Shifting levels of the stress hormone cortisol were additionally measured with saliva samples that the participants were asked to collect every two hours during the same work day, and on a separate leisure day.
The researchers reported that age, marital status, gender, and income appeared to have no impact on how happy the participants said they felt while at work.
Dr. Steptoe and his team also observed that those women and men who demonstrated the lowest levels of psychological distress on the earlier mental health screenings appeared to be generally happier people.
And those women and men who were happiest at work seemed to be happiest at play, they say - although, for all participants, happiness was in more abundance during days off at home than during days "on" at the office.
Among the biological markers explored, not all appeared to influence happiness. Blood pressure was not associated with the participants' self-assessed happiness.
However, cortisol readings did appear to firmly back the notion of a biological connection between stress and happiness. The researchers found the happiest women and men had the lowest levels of cortisol. Cortisol levels were, on average, more than 32 percent higher among the least happy individuals.
The researchers note the danger that high stress hormone levels can pose over time, highlighting the association between elevated cortisol and a higher risk for developing high blood pressure, diabetes, abdominal obesity, and a decreased resistance to infection.
On another biological front, the authors reported that blood tests revealed up to 12 times higher levels of a liver-produced protein known as plasma fibrinogen among the least happy women and men.
Fibrinogen works to stop bleeding by helping clots to form, but elevated levels of the protein have been associated with a higher risk for cardiovascular disease.
The researchers conclude that having a strong sense of well-being and happiness may help boost biological systems, ultimately helping to lower the risk for developing a range of illnesses down the road.
And they emphasized that this happiness-healthiness pathway appears to be a direct mind-body link that is independent of lifestyle choices, such as exercise, smoking, and drinking.
"There's no doubt that people should do the healthy lifestyle things - being physically active, and more prudent in their diets, and not smoking - irrespective of this biological link," Dr. Steptoe advises. "But we need to think about things that will lead to more positive states as well. Doing things that you want to do, and getting gratification from those things."
But Dr. Steptoe cautions that the road to becoming a happier - and thereby healthier - person can be tricky to navigate.
"I can't really prescribe how people should make themselves happier, because philosophers have failed at that for centuries," he says. "But most of our sense of happiness seems to relate to having good relationships with family and friends, and that's not something that can be maintained without some investment of effort, and keeping an appropriate balance. That balance, of course, is going to be different for different people."
Dr. Albert Ray, regional coordinator for health promotion and preventive care for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, says, "I try to give people concrete things to do to help de-stress. Get a dog, get a cat, go out, play sports, go to their religious institution, do yoga, get married, have a relationship, go on a vacation, do things that can relax a person."
Dr. Ray wholeheartedly applauded the researchers' ability to isolate the biological evidence for the effect happiness has on our bodies - something he said he has observed anecdotally for years.
"There's no question that people with a positive attitude have lower blood pressure, suffer less illness, usually have lower cholesterol, and better resistance to most infections," he notes. "And when they do get sick, usually a positive attitude can result in shorter illness.
"And I think every doctor tries to tell their patient to get out and smell the flowers, go for a walk, read a book, and try and look on the bright side rather than have a negative outlook," Dr. Ray adds. "It just seems sensible to reason. Even without being a doctor."
Always consult your physician for more information.
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Children of mothers who had the dangerous blood pressure complication preeclampsia during pregnancy are also at high risk for a type of hypertension themselves, say researchers at the Experimental Biology 2005 meeting.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), blood pressure is the amount of force exerted by the blood against the walls of the arteries. A person's blood pressure is considered high when the readings are greater than 140 mm Hg systolic (the top number in the blood pressure reading) or 90 mm Hg diastolic (the bottom number).
In general, high blood pressure, or hypertension, contributes to the development of coronary heart disease, stroke, heart failure, and kidney disease.
The NIH states that although many pregnant women with high blood pressure have healthy babies without serious problems, high blood pressure can be dangerous for both the mother and the fetus.
Women with preexisting, or chronic, high blood pressure are more likely to have certain complications during pregnancy than those with normal blood pressure. However, some women develop high blood pressure while they are pregnant (often called gestational hypertension).
The effects of high blood pressure range from mild to severe. High blood pressure can harm the mother's kidneys and other organs, and it can cause low birth weight and early delivery. In the most serious cases, the mother develops preeclampsia or "toxemia of pregnancy" - which can threaten the lives of both the mother and the fetus, the NIH states.
Preeclampsia is a condition that typically starts after the 20th week of pregnancy and is related to increased blood pressure and protein in the mother's urine (as a result of kidney problems).
Preeclampsia affects the placenta, and it can affect the mother's kidney, liver, and brain. When preeclampsia causes seizures, the condition is known as eclampsia - the second leading cause of maternal death in the US, according to the NIH. Preeclampsia is also a leading cause of fetal complications, which include low birth weight, premature birth, and stillbirth.
There is no proven way to prevent preeclampsia. Most women who develop signs of preeclampsia, however, are closely monitored to lessen or avoid related problems. The only way to "cure" preeclampsia is to deliver the baby.
High blood pressure problems occur in 6 percent to 8 percent of all pregnancies in the US, about 70 percent of which are first-time pregnancies. In 1998, more than 146,320 cases of preeclampsia alone were diagnosed, the NIH notes.
Although the proportion of pregnancies with gestational hypertension and eclampsia has remained about the same in the US over the past decade, the rate of preeclampsia has increased by nearly one-third.
This increase is due in part to a rise in the numbers of older mothers and of multiple births, where preeclampsia occurs more frequently.
The new study shows that these children are at higher risk for pulmonary hypertension, a potentially lethal blood vessel disorder of the lungs characterized by above-normal levels of blood pressure in the pulmonary artery, which originates in the heart.
This is the first study to show that preeclampsia may have a persistent and potentially deadly impact on a child's pulmonary circulation.
Swiss and Bolivian researchers used echocardiography to measure pulmonary artery pressure in 11 children whose mothers had preeclampsia, comparing those findings to 13 children of mothers who had normal pregnancies.
Children of mothers who had preeclampsia had about a 33 percent higher pulmonary artery pressure than the other children, they report.
The researchers are now trying to identify the underlying mechanism behind pulmonary vascular damage in children born to mothers with preeclampsia.
Pinpointing the mechanism could lead to new ways to prevent and treat primary pulmonary hypertension, they say.
Always consult your physician for more information.
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