Why be happy?

Why be happy? In case someone needs to be convinced, scientific evidence reveals several reasons to aspire to greater happiness and satisfaction.

Researchers Ed Diener, Laura King and Sonja Lyubomirsky have proven that becoming happier doesn't just make you feel good. Happiness brings with it multiple additional benefits. Compared to their less happy peers, happier people are more sociable.

That is, they are energetic, charitable, cooperative, and most loved by others. They tend to marry more and stay married. In addition, happy individuals have richer networks of friends and social support.

Thus, happy people show more flexibility and creativity in their thoughts, being more productive in their jobs. They are better leaders and negotiators and make more money.

Likewise, they tend to be more resilient in the face of difficulties, have stronger immune systems, and are physically healthier. Happy people live longer.

Happiness Studies

One study showed that individuals who were happy as freshman college students had higher salaries sixteen years later (when they were in their mid-thirties) without an early wealth advantage.

In another study, which also tracked undergraduates over time, women who expressed sincere joy in college yearbook photos were relatively more likely to marry at age 27 and were more likely to have satisfying marriages. at fifty-two.

The king of Bhutan, the last Buddhist kingdom of the Himalayas, nestled between India and China, decided that the best way to promote economic development would be to increase happiness his nation's domestic– that is, to focus on HDI instead of GDP .

Bhutan's emphasis on the happiness of its people, above all, seems to have produced benefits for society. Although most people in this small country are involved in subsistence farming, they have what they need – food on the table and universal health care – and have refused to make money from commercial ventures that could compromise the health and beauty of their environment. and its equal existence.

Benefits of being happy

Happiness seems to have several positive by-products. As we become happier, we not only boost experiences of joy, contentment, love, pride and wonder.

Likewise, we also improve other aspects of our lives: our energy levels, our immune systems, our engagement with work and with other people, and our physical knowledge and mental health. As we become happier, we reinforce our feelings of confidence self-and self-worth.

We believe that we are worthy human beings, deserving of respect. A final and perhaps least appreciated advantage is that if we become happier, we will benefit not only ourselves, but also our partners, families, communities and even society in general.

6 reasons to be happy

Over the last decade, an entire industry has sprouted up promising the secrets to happiness. There are bestselling books like The Happiness Project, The Happiness Advantage and The How of Happiness and happiness shows like Happiest.

But all these books and classes beg the question: why bother? Many of us prefer to focus on boosting our productivity and success rather than our positive emotions. Or maybe we've tried to be happier, but we always seem hampered by setbacks. Why keep trying to be happy?

Scientific studies have found that happiness can make our hearts healthier, our immune systems stronger, and our lives longer. 

 Happiness and health can indeed be a virtuous circle, but researchers are still trying to understand their relationship. If you need some extra motivation to be happier, check out these six ways happiness has been linked to good health.

1 – Being happy protects the heart

Love and happiness may not originate in the heart, but they are good for it. For example, a 2005 article found that happiness predicts lower heart rate and blood pressure.

In the study, participants rated their happiness more than 30 times in one day and then again three years later. Initially happier participants had a lower heart rate at follow-up (about six beats slower per minute), and happier participants during follow-up had better blood pressure.

The research also found a link between happiness and another measure of heart health: heart rate variability, which refers to the time interval between heartbeats and is associated with the risk of various diseases. In a 2008 study, researchers tracked 76 patients suspected of having coronary artery disease.

Has happiness been linked to healthier hearts, even among people who may have heart problems? It looked like: participants who rated themselves as happy on the day their hearts were tested had a healthier pattern of heart rate variability that day.

Heart Health

Over time, these effects can add up to serious differences in heart health. In a 2010 study, researchers invited nearly 2,000 Canadians to the lab to talk about their anger and stress at work.

Observers rated them on a scale of one to five as they expressed positive emotions such as joy, happiness, enthusiasm and contentment.

Ten years later, researchers checked in with participants to see how they were doing — and it turned out that the happiest ones were less likely to develop coronary heart disease.

In fact, for every one-point increase in positive emotions they expressed, their risk of heart disease was 22 percent lower.

Being happy protects the heart

2 – Being happy strengthens the immune system

Do you know a grumpy person who always seems to get sick? This may not be a coincidence: research points to a link between happiness and a stronger immune system.

In a 2003 experiment, 350 adults volunteered to be exposed to the common cold (don't worry, they were well compensated). Before the exposure, researchers called them six times in two weeks and asked how much they had experienced nine positive emotions – such as feeling energetic, satisfied and calm – that day.

After five days in quarantine, participants with the most positive emotions were less likely to develop a cold.

Being happy reduces your chances of getting disease

Some of the same researchers wanted to investigate why happier people might be less susceptible to disease, so in a 2006 study, they provided 81 graduate students with the hepatitis B vaccine. After receiving the first two doses, participants rated themselves on the same nine positive emotions.

Those with positive emotion were nearly twice as likely to have a high antibody response to the vaccine – a sign of a robust immune system. Rather than just affecting symptoms, happiness seemed to be literally working on a cellular level.

A much earlier experiment found that immune system activity in the same individual rose and fell depending on their happiness.

For two months, 30 male dental students took pills containing a harmless rabbit blood protein, which causes an immune response in humans. They also assessed whether they experienced positive emotions that day.

On days when they were happiest, participants had a better immune response, as measured by the presence of an antibody in their saliva that defends against foreign substances.

Being happy helps strengthen the immune system

3 - happybe fighting stress

Stress is not only disturbing to the psychological level, but also triggers biological changes in our hormones and blood pressure. Happiness seems to moderate these effects, or at least help us recover more quickly.

In the study mentioned above, where participants rated their happiness more than 30 times in a day, researchers also found associations between happiness and stress.

The happiest participants had 23 percent lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than the less happy. And, another indicator of stress – the level of a blood clotting protein that rises after stress – was 12 times lower.

Happiness vs. Stress

Happiness also seems to have benefits even when stress is unavoidable. In a 2009 study, some researchers decided to stress psychology students and see how they react.

Students were taken to a soundproof chamber, where they first answered questions indicating whether they generally felt 10 feelings such as enthusiasm or pride.

Then came their worst nightmare: they had to answer an extremely difficult statistics question by being videotaped, and they were told that their teacher would rate their answer. During the process, her heart was measured with an electrocardiogram (ECG) device and a blood pressure monitor.

As a result of this stress, the hearts of the happiest students recovered more quickly.

Being happy helps reduce everyday stress. Leave

4 - Happy people feel less pain

A 2001 study asked participants to rate their recent experience of positive emotions, and then (five weeks later) how much negative symptoms they experienced such as muscle tension, dizziness and heartburn since the study began.

The people who reported the highest levels of positive emotion at first actually became healthier over the course of the study and ended up healthier than their unhappy counterparts.

The fact that their health improved in five weeks (and the health of the most unhappy participants declined) suggests that the results are not just evidence of people in a good mood, giving better health ratings than people in a bad mood.

A 2005 study suggests that positive emotion also mitigates pain in the context of illness. Women with arthritis, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain rated themselves weekly on positive emotions such as interest, enthusiasm, and inspiration for about three months.

Throughout the study, those with the highest global rating were less likely to experience increases in pain.

Being happy helps reduce chronic pain

5 – Being happy fights illnesses and disabilities

Happiness is also associated with improvements in more severe and long-term conditions, not just short-term aches and pains.

In a 2008 study of nearly 10,000 Australians, participants who reported being happy and satisfied with life were nearly 1.5 times less likely to have long-term health conditions (such as chronic pain and serious vision problems) two years ago. later.

Another study in the same year found that women with breast cancer recalled being less happy and optimistic before diagnosis than women without breast cancer, suggesting that happiness and optimism can be protective against the disease.

As adults become older, another condition that often afflicts them is frailty, which is characterized by strength, endurance and balance, and puts them at risk for disability and death.

In a 2004 study, more than 1,550 Mexican Americans 65 and older rated how much self-esteem, hope, happiness, and pleasure they felt in the past week. After seven years, participants with more positive emotion ratings were less likely to be frail.

Some of the same researchers also found that the happiest older people (by the same measure of positive emotion) were less likely to have a stroke over the next six years. This was particularly true for men.

Being happy helps to overcome deficiencies and lead a healthy life

6 – Happiness increases life expectancy

In the end, the ultimate health indicator may be longevity – and here, especially, happiness comes into play. In one of the most famous studies of happiness and longevity, life expectancy of Catholic nuns was linked to the amount of positive emotion they expressed in an autobiographical essay written upon entering the convent decades earlier, generally in the 20

You don't need to be a nun to experience the life-long benefits of happiness, however. In a 2011 study, nearly 4,000 British adults aged 52 to 79 reported how happy, enthusiastic and content they were multiple times in a single day.

Here, the happiest people were 35% less likely to die over the course of about five years than their happier counterparts.

Being happy helps increase longevity

Happiness and longevity

While happiness can prolong our lives, it cannot work miracles. There is some evidence that the link between happiness and longevity does not extend to the bad, or at least not the very sick.

A 2005 meta-analysis speculates that experiencing positive emotion is helpful in illnesses with a long timeline. However, it can be really harmful in late stage disease.

The authors cite studies showing that positive emotion reduces the risk of death in people with diabetes and AIDS. However, it increases the risk in people with metastatic breast cancer. And also in cases of early-stage melanoma and late-stage kidney disease.

This increased risk may be due to the fact that happier people do not report their symptoms. As a result, they do not receive the right treatment. Nor are they concerned about being overly optimistic.

The important thing is to be happy!

As the science of happiness and health matures, researchers are trying to determine what role, if any, happiness actually plays in causing health benefits. They are also trying to distinguish the effects of different forms of happiness. Including positive emotions and life satisfaction.

The effects of “extreme” happiness and other factors. For example, a new study suggests that we should look not just at life satisfaction levels. But, in the variability of life satisfaction.

Thus, the researchers found that low life satisfaction with many fluctuations – that is, an unstable level of happiness – was linked to an even earlier death than low life satisfaction alone.

All that said, the study of the health benefits of happiness is still young. It will take time to discover the exact mechanisms by which happiness influences health. As well as factors such as social relationships and exercise fall into place. But in the meantime, it seems safe to imagine that the happier you will be healthier.