Well, it's official...happy people live longer! So be happy!

Practice smiling today!

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"A Healthy You: Happy people live longer, research finds


By Dr. Randy Eichner

Happy and optimistic folks live longer, they say, and this holds true in a recent study. Dutch researchers tracked nearly 1,000 older people for nine years. During that time, nearly 400 died.

Here's the interesting part: Extreme pessimists, compared to extreme optimists, were twice as likely to die during the nine years of the study. Was it their frame of mind that mattered, or something else?

Because a new study, one that provides the first-ever glimpse into hour-by-hour happiness, comes to a stunning conclusion. It finds that seriously ill patients are just as happy as healthy people.

Researchers studied 49 pairs of healthy people and patients (on dialysis for kidney failure). Each got a personal digital assistant (PDA) that beeped randomly during each two-hour period of an entire week. Each time they were beeped, subjects recorded their mood in a quick series of ratings.

Results? No difference existed between the 49 patients and the 49 healthy people in the average hour-by-hour rating of their overall mood, which on the whole was on the positive side.

An interesting tidbit: The healthy subjects predicted the patients would be sad and they were wrong. Maybe sick people are more resilient than we give them credit for. Or maybe those of us who are healthy should be happier than we are!

It's not as simple as "cheer up and live longer." Maybe some genes make you happy and other genes help you endure. Maybe good cheer and a long life are unrelated but happen to travel together.

For example, a study of 730 pairs of identical twins found they matched closely for adult happiness whether they grew up together or apart. This suggests we are born with an emotional "set point." Some are born happier than others.

Maybe happy people live longer because they take better care of themselves than sad sacks do. In one study, some folks were told to keep a diary of things that annoyed them and other folks were told to record things they were grateful for.

Sure enough, folks who keyed on gratitude, not annoyances, rated themselves happier and did things to promote their health, such as exercising more and getting regular checkups.

So if you want to live long, sure, be happy, but also do the right things.


Dr. Eichner is a professor of medicine at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. "

Some people take drugs to make them happy and end up suicidal..

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If that is so, then they are on the wrong drugs.