healthbriefs


Don’t Worry, Be Healthy T


he adage, “Don’t worry, be happy,” captures the essence of the first-ever


metastudy of the relationship between happiness and heart health. Based on a comprehensive review involving 200- plus studies, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, concluded that a positive outlook on life could help protect the heart from cardiovascular disease. Julia Boehm, Ph.D., and Laura


Kubzansky, Ph.D., discovered that certain psychological traits—optimism, positive emotions and a sense of mean- ing—both offer measurable protection against heart attacks and strokes and slow the progression of cardiovascular disease. The pair found that the most optimistic individuals had approximate- ly 50 percent less chance of experi- encing an initial cardiovascular event compared with their less upbeat peers. “The absence of the negative is not the same thing as the presence of the positive,” notes Boehm. “Psychol- ogy has been trying to fix what’s wrong with people, but there’s also an in- creasing interest in what people might be doing right.”


20 Collier/Lee Counties swfl.NaturalAwakeningsMag.com


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