Sorry for the bad news, but optimism does not prolong life say researchers

[Joanne Reeves, Medicine and Health Contributor]

RT.COM: Researchers at the University of California, Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin, say that they now know which factors a person can mobilise to make them live longer.Their conclusions came from the results of a study that had begun in 1921 when the lives of 1,500 children had started to be watched by researchers.

The research concludes that happy people on average do not live as long as the unhappy ones. It is the emotionally stable who have longer lives.  That is because optimists are more likely to take risks, which emotional stability is good for psychological and physical health.  Marriage is beneficial for men’s physical condition, the study found additionally, but does not matter all that much to women’s health and single women tend to live for as long as married ones.

The study also found that:-* workaholics live longer than slouchers;
* the longest living men are those who have lived all their lives married to the same woman
* divorced and twice-married men do not live for as long as unmarried men
* helping others and your community contributes to long life
* long life is attributed to the feeling of being protected.

So if you want to increase your lifespan, become a workaholic, marry (and stay with) your childhood sweetheart, help others, be emotionally stable, get someone to love and protect you and avoid being too happy!

j

k

Related Articles

l

• The Longevity Project: An Interview with Howard S. Friedman (psychcentral.com)
• The Secret to Longevity – It’s about Character Not Calisthenics (psychologytoday.com)
• Mitchell Tsai: The Secrets to Long Life: Worry, Work Hard and Marry Well (If You’re a Man) – With Howard Friedman, the Psychologist Behind An Eight-Decade Study on Longevity [Hans Villarica, Time – 3/17/11] (healthland.time.com)
• Girly men live longer, according to NPR piece (pinkisforboys.wordpress.com)
• Can Your Job Kill You? Career Success and Longevity (psychologytoday.com)
• Secret of Longevity: Conscientiousness (neatorama.com)
• The Key to a Long Life: Conscientious Habits (money.usnews.com)
• Increased life expectancy to blame for falling church attendance (dailymail.co.uk)
• Longer life expectancy ‘turning people off church’ (bbc.co.uk)
• imabonehead: The Key to a Long Life: Conscientious Habits – Yahoo! News (news.yahoo.com)
• Why retail therapy may prolong life (bbc.co.uk)
• Higher Life Expectancy Means Lower Church Attendance (livescience.com)
• Having too much stress and work may reduce your life expectancy (paulinamallard.wordpress.com)
• 30pc increase in middle aged people living alone (telegraph.co.uk)
• Falling church attendance? Blame it on higher life expectancy! (news.bioscholar.com)
• Trends in European life expectancy: a salutary view (oup.com)

Tags: Health, Howard Friedman, La Sierra University, Leslie Martin, Lewis Terman, Marriage, Research, University of California