Health Benefits of Feeling Happy

We’ve been shown that stress and depression increase the risk of coronary heart disease, but what happens in the reverse situation, i.e. when one has reason to be self-satisfied?  Harvard scientists have done a study, and reported in the European Heart Journal.

The Whitehall II Study has been used in several previous analyses of the relationships between lifestyle at work and health outcomes.  This particular study involved almost 8,000 initially healthy civil servants (i.e. British government office workers) with an average age of 49.  They were asked to rate their satisfaction in 7 domains: love relationships, leisure activities, standard of living, job, family, sex life, and one’s self.  The occurrence of coronary heart disease (clinically-verified angina, non-fatal heart attack (MI), or coronary-related death) was obtained from medical screening, hospital data, and registries over a 5-year follow-up period.     

Overall, higher levels of average satisfaction were associated with a significantly reduced risk of total coronary heart disease.  After adjustments for other possible influencing factors (age, sex, education, income, health behaviors, blood pressure, and ‘metabolic functioning’), the reduction amounted to 13%.

Four specific domains - one's job, family, sex life, and self – showed higher levels of satisfaction associated with reduced risk of coronary heart disease.  But for the other three - one's love relationship, leisure activities, and standard of living - there was no such association.  And when the three coronary heart disease outcomes were analyzed separately, average domain satisfaction scores were associated with angina, but not with non-fatal MI or coronary-related death.

The findings indicate that satisfaction with life may promote heart health.  The angina relationship suggests that less atherosclerosis may be related to more satisfaction with life; to test this, one could consider a similar study using measurements of arterial elasticity or intima:media thickness.  Meanwhile, a little self-satisfaction wouldn’t do any harm, and might do some good.