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 “We found that after accounting for poor health and other lifestyle
choices, being happier doesn’t make you live longer, and being
stressed doesn’t increase your risk of death,” lead study author
Bette Liu of the University of New South Wales said by email.
To explore the connection between unhappiness and the likelihood of
dying, Liu and her colleagues looked at data on more than 700,000
middle-aged women collected over more than a decade. At the start,
when the women were around 59 years old, 17 percent reported being
unhappy, and this was more likely in women who were in poor health.
During the next ten years, about 31,500 women died, representing
about 4 percent of the study population.
After researchers adjusted for a host of factors independently
linked to mortality - like hypertension, diabetes, smoking,
drinking, asthma, arthritis, depression and anxiety - mere
unhappiness wasn’t associated with increased mortality from all
causes, or specifically from cancer or heart disease.
The data was collected from 1996 to 2001. When they joined the
study, and again every 3 to 5 years, women completed questionnaires
asking about social and demographic factors, lifestyle choices and
health.
At the start of the study, 39 percent said they were happy most of
the time, and another 43 percent described themselves as usually
happy. Researchers counted as “unhappy” the 16 percent of women who
were happy only sometimes and the 1 percent who said this was a rare
occurrence.
Over time, few women changed their assessment of their own happiness
levels, the researchers report in The Lancet.
Generally, the happy women in the study were older, less likely to
have advanced degrees and more likely to be nonsmokers as well as
regular exercisers with steady romantic relationships who routinely
participated in religious or other group activities. These happy
women were also more likely to get eight hours of sleep each night.
In contrast, the unhappy women were more likely to report only fair
or poor general health and to be in treatment for depression or
anxiety, the study found.
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Women were 20 percent more likely to die during the study if they
reported being in fair or poor health.
There is no perfect way to measure happiness, the authors concede.
Unhappiness might, however, lead people to do things known to hasten
death like drink too much or exercise too little, they speculate.
“Previous reports of reduced mortality associated with happiness
could be due to the increased mortality of people who are unhappy
because of their poor health,” the study team points out.
It’s also important to note that death isn’t the only outcome that
matters when assessing the benefits of happiness, noted Philipe
Barreto a researcher at the University Hospital of Toulouse in
France who wrote an accompanying editorial.
Even if happiness won't impact life expectancy, it will probably be
associated with quality of life, Barreto said by email.
“In other words, even if happiness does not add years to life, it
probably adds life to years,” Barreto said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1IUndrv and http://bit.ly/1Zr0blN The Lancet,
online December 9, 2015.
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