More and more research agrees on one thing: being happy not only makes you feel better, it also leads to a wide range of physical health benefits. Here are the most obvious ones.
fresh compared to less positive people. Consuming these items regularly leads to various benefits, such as lower risks of diabetes, stroke and heart disease.
Through the same study, the researchers also found that the most positive individuals were, in 33% of cases, more physically active and had several hours of physical activity per week, a "habit that helps build strong bones, increase levels of energy, decrease body fat and lower blood pressure.
In addition, being happier can also improve sleep habits and quality, which affects concentration, productivity, physical performance and maintaining a healthy weight.
healthy is important for maintaining overall health and it seems that being happy can help greatly in this regard.
This has been confirmed over the years by several studies. One of these, conducted on over 300 healthy people who had been injected with the cold virus, found that the less happy were almost three times more likely to develop the disease than the others.
The reasons behind the happiness-health cause of the immune system are not yet fully understood. It could be due to the impact of happiness on the activity of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which regulates the immune system, hormones, digestion and stress levels, or because happy people embrace behaviors more often. of health promotion.
, a hormone that contributes to many of the damaging effects of stress, including sleep disturbances, weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension.Numerous studies show that cortisol levels tend to be lower when people are happiest. One of them surveyed over 200 adults, assigning them a series of stressful lab tasks and then found that cortisol levels in happier individuals were 32% lower than in unhappy participants. These effects also seem to persist over time as when the researchers followed the same group of adults three years later they found a 20% difference in cortisol levels between happier and lesser people.
Fighting stress is also helpful in countering the emotional hunger that can occur during the pandemic.
and maintaining healthy eating habits. .due to many diseases including arthritis, a common condition characterized by inflammation and degeneration of the joints. In fact, numerous studies have found that being happy can reduce the pain and stiffness associated with the condition.
Such a state of mind can also help reduce pain in other conditions. A study of nearly 1,000 people recovering from a stroke found that the happiest people, three months after discharge, had a 13% less pain perception than others.
According to scholars, a decrease in pain in happy people may be the fact that their positive emotions help to broaden perspectives, encouraging new thoughts and ideas.
