Feeling happy 'lowers risk of dying'

1st November 2011 - Happiness could be the key to a longer life as well as a more enjoyable one, according to a study.

Researchers in the UK found that older people who said they were happy, even for a little while, were less likely to die over a five-year period, and the happier they were, the longer they lived.

Researchers from University College London followed 3,853 people aged between 52 and 79 who were part of a long running project, the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

Recording mood

Earlier investigations have looked at happiness and longevity by asking people to recall their emotional state. Asking them to remember something in the past may not be the same as their actual experience, because it is known that recollections of mood may not be accurate, as they are influenced by errors in memory and other factors. This latest study asked people to rate their feelings of happiness and anxiety at four different points throughout the day. This “real-time” method involving the collection of a number of ratings of how a person feels over a period of time is likely to be more accurate.

Researchers found that, after taking into account the initial health of participants, and also depression, exercise levels, drinking habits and smoking, people who reported feeling happiest had a 35% lower risk of dying during the study than people who were least happy.

Negative emotions like anxiety or even depression did not appear to have any effect on longevity, meaning that in older people, the absence of even short periods of happiness may be more important to health than the presence of negative factors such as depression and anxiety.

Momentary happiness

The researchers warn that the results do not establish a cause-and-effect relationship between happiness and longer life. Instead, they say, momentary happiness may relate to biological processes or other behavioural factors that could explain the increased survival odds.

"We don't know whether there is a direct effect, or whether happiness is a marker of other factors," lead author Professor Andrew Steptoe tells BootsWebMD. "We know, for example, that people with good social relationships and strong social support tend to be happier, and these factors have been related to health in other studies.  Perhaps happiness is an indicator of these kinds of influence on the individual."

Boosting happiness

Professor Steptoe guards against making recommendations about improving well-being in order to promote older people's health. "But I would say that the study points to the importance of a holistic approach to the care of older people.  So in addition to good quality health care and ensuring that older people have the resources to sustain their material needs, efforts should be made to improve affective states or moods as well."

The results of the study are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.