Study happy people live longer?

Researchers are exploring the connection between happiness and life
Do happy people live longer than unfortunate ones? "No" is the result of a joint study by leading British and Australian epidemiologists. According to the analysis of the data of several hundred thousand women, luck did not automatically mean a longer life. Instead, more important are risk factors such as Smoking and social status, the researchers currently in the journal "The Lancet".
Misery alone does not make you ill
"Anyone who is happy lives longer" - a pleasant idea, but apparently does not always correspond to reality. The connection seemed quite plausible: a serious illness usually leads to the victim becoming unhappier - so for many, unhappiness is directly related to an earlier death. However, as Bette Liu from the University of New South Wales in Australia and the epidemiology of Sir Richard Peto from Oxford show, cause and effect were apparently reversed. According to this, illness leads to misfortune, but vice versa alone does not make ill.

Who is happy, is getting older too? Unfortunately, no. Image: Robert Kneschke - fotolia

Researchers use data from the "One Million Women Study"
As reported in a press release, "The Lancet", ten years earlier, researchers sent questionnaires to participants in the context of their "One Million Women Study" survey in the UK, including their own assessment of their personal health status, mental health status Wellbeing, stress and relaxation went. Five out of six women said they were usually happy, but one usually felt unhappy.

As in other studies, the report found that dissatisfaction was associated with deprivation, smoking, physical inactivity, and a life without a partner. The strongest link, however, was that the women who were already in poor health were more likely to say they were unhappy, stressed and un-relaxed.

Unhappy women rarely had a permanent partner
In the context of the evaluation of more than 700,000 data sets, the scientists compared this information with the mortality rates of women, who had been on average 59 years old at the beginning of the study. The total death rate among the "lucky" and "unhappy" was found to be the same - despite the differences in health and lifestyle. The study was so extensive that misfortune could therefore be ruled out as a direct cause of a substantial increase in overall mortality among women, the report said.

"Disease makes itself unhappy. But unhappiness itself does not make you sick. We have not seen any direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality - even in this decade-long study of one million women, "says Bette Liu. Instead, according to the researchers, risk factors, such as Pre-existing diseases or smoking play a central role, which occur more frequently in the "unfortunate". For the women who said they were dissatisfied with their mental well-being were, in comparison, more frequent smokers, practiced less sports and lived more alone.

Confusion of cause and effect
"Many people still believe that stress or unhappiness can trigger disease directly. But they simply confuse cause and effect, "says renowned epidemiology Sir Richard Peto. Commenting on the study, Dr. Philippe de Souto Barreto and Professor Yves Rolland of Toulouse University Hospital (France) that the study provides very valuable and solid information on happiness, health and mortality. To further investigate the topic, the experts are now according to randomized studies necessary. "Such studies should be driven by allowing comparisons between different age groups and between men and women. Intercultural studies could also shed light on the generalizability of happiness-promoting measures. " Philippe de Souto Barreto and Professor Yves Rolland. (No)