Be Happy - You May Avoid Heart Disease
Thursday, February 18, 2010 - 15:14
in Health & Medicine
People who are usually happy, enthusiastic and content are less likely to develop heart disease than those who tend not to be happy, according to a purely observational study that needs to be confirmed with clinical research. Over a period of ten years, researchers followed 1,739 healthy adults (862 men and 877 women) who were participating in the 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey. At the start of the study, published in the European Heart Journal, trained nurses assessed the participants' risk of heart disease and, with both self-reporting and clinical assessment, they measured symptoms of depression, hostility, anxiety and the degree of expression of positive emotions, which is known as "positive affect". read more