Being Happy Does Not Make You Live Longer

Apparently, happiness nor optimism won't get you those extra number of years.

A number of researches have linked unhappiness and stress to early death. However, contrary to the majority's belief and knowledge, a person's well-being is not affected whether he or she is in a happy or sad disposition. A new study published in the Lancet Medical Journal have built on the few studies disproving the relationship between one's emotional and physical health.

Mashable reported that the new research covered and analyzed over one million middle-aged British women over ten years. The researchers found that, among 700,000 women in Britain, those who were identified as happy and unhappy shared the same mortality over the years.

Forbes furthered that, while being unhappy "make you less apt to take care of your health in any number of ways," it does not diminish your over all state of health.

"Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness doesn't make you ill. We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality, even in a ten-year study of a million women," lead report author Dr. Bette Liu, now at the University of New South Wales, Australia noted.

Led by University of Oxford's Professor Sir Richard Peto, the study procedure was done by examining data from the UK Million Women Study -- an initiative that tracks women's health outcomes over the long term.

The initial stages of the study covered women who were on average 59 years old and none had any serious health issues (e.g. heart disease, cancer, stroke, or chronic obstructive lung disease.) The following were the results after questionnaires distributed were processed: 39% of the women reported being happy most of the time, 44% said they were usually happy and 17% said they were unhappy.

Variables such as smoking, body mass index, and treatment for health problems like asthma, diabetes and arthritis were considered by the team but "there were no connections between unhappiness, stress, and lack of control and mortality." Furthermore, they found that, while unhappiness was related to "self-reported poor health," it is not linked to long term mortality.

Unhappy and happy people both had about the same risk of death overall, including that from heart disease and cancer.

 "Many still believe that stress or unhappiness can directly cause disease," said Peto, "but they are simply confusing cause and effect."

Study author Betty Liu seconded Peto in the conclusion: "Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn't make you ill." She continued: "We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality, even in a ten-year study of a million women."