THURSDAY, Feb. 18, 2010 (Health.com) — Do you have a sunny outlook on life? If so, you have one more reason to be happy: You may be at less risk for heart disease.
People with a joyful, positive, and enthusiastic disposition—what psychologists call “positive affect”—are less likely than their gloomier peers to have a heart attack, a new study has found.
“This is the first study, to our knowledge, that has shown that clinically assessed positive emotions are protective of a first heart attack,” says the study’s lead author, Karina W. Davidson, PhD, the director of the Center for Behavioral Cardiovascular Health at Columbia University Medical Center, in New York City.
Davidson and her colleagues followed 1,739 adults without previously diagnosed heart disease for 10 years. At the beginning of the study, the participants were asked how they typically respond to various situations, including stressful ones; researchers then used the videotaped interviews to rate how positive the people’s emotions were on a scale of 1 to 5. Researchers also gauged the participants’ risk of heart disease (by measuring cholesterol, blood pressure, and other risk factors) and their levels of depression, hostility, and anxiety.
During the follow-up period, there were 145 heart attacks and other cardiac events in the group. The study participants whose emotions were most positive (those who scored a “5″ in the interview) had the lowest risk of heart attack and heart disease, the researchers found. For every 1-point decrease on the 5-point scale, a person’s risk of experiencing a heart attack or other event increased by 22%, according to the study, which was published in the European Heart Journal.
This pattern held even after the researchers factored in how depressed (or not) the study participants were. The people who reported symptoms of depression but also had an upbeat outlook were still less likely to develop heart disease than people who were less positive. This was a significant finding, as previous studies have shown that depression is associated with a greater risk of heart disease.
“This new study adds to a growing body of research that documents the health-enhancing effects of positive affect [and] emotion,” says Redford B. Williams, MD, the head of behavioral medicine at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, N.C. In their ability to promote heart health, he adds, “I believe positive emotions rank right up there with weight loss, exercise, and quitting smoking.”
Experts don’t fully understand how a positive outlook protects our hearts, but Davidson and her colleagues suggest that it may have beneficial effects on heart rate, blood pressure, and the stress hormone cortisol, which is involved in inflammation and can increase heart attack risk. Cheerful people may also sleep better, or may be more successful at quitting smoking than their less joyous counterparts, the researchers note.
Next page: You can learn to be more positive
