Research on optimism and heart
This research from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studied existing data and culled the following information: being an optimist is good for your heart.
“Research has already shown a link between psychological pathology and poor physical health,” study lead author Rosalba Hernandez said in a press release. “So we decided to look at whether there’s also a link between psychological well-being and good physical health.
“And by looking at optimism as a measure of psychological well-being, we found that after adjusting all sorts of socio-economic factors – like education, income and even mental health – people who are the most optimistic do have higher odds of being in ideal cardiovascular health, compared with the least optimistic,”
Multi-ethnic study
Hernandez is an assistant prof in the school of social work at the University and the study was published in the latest issue of Health Behavior and Policy Review. The researchers used data assembled over 10 years ago to gain their results.
It came from the ‘Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis’ compiled between 2002 and 2004. Over 5,100 adults from 45 to 84 participated, 40 percent white, 30 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic and 10 percent Asian.
They’d filled out data asking them how they felt about their lives and were asked to respond to questions and statements pursuant to optimism. For example, they were asked to respond to the following two statements:
1) I’m always very optimistic about my future
2) I hardly expect things to go my way.
Based upon their responses, the researchers divided the participants into four categories pursuant to their level of optimism about life, from the most to the least optimistic, with two levels in between.
Healthy attitude, healthy heart
They then looked at data on each participants heart health, including their weight, whether they smoked, the amount of exercise they did, their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other heart health indicators.
They found that those in the more optimistic groups had better heart health by indicators such as lower cholesterol, better blood sugar levels and better exercise regimes. The more optimistic were found to be 50 and 76 percent more likely to rank higher in heart health scores than those who were not optimistic.
“Individuals with the highest levels of optimism have twice the odds of being in ideal cardiovascular health compared to their more pessimistic counterparts,” Prof. Hernandez wrote. “This association remains significant, even after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics and poor mental health.”
Boy oh boy, ain’t that study something to feel good about?
