What’s your emotional state right now? Cheerful? Gloomy? Optimistic? Worried? Researchers at Johns Hopkins say that the right attitude could drop your heart attack risk by up to 50 percent.“If you are by nature a cheerful person and look on the bright side of things, you are more likely to be protected from cardiac events,” says study leader Lisa R. Yanek, M.P.H., an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “A happier temperament has an actual effect on disease and you may be healthier as a result.”
In this study, Yanek and other researchers analyzed data from GeneSTAR (Genetic Study of Atherosclerosis Risk), a 25-year Johns Hopkins project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.
Among other things, study participants filled out well-being surveys and received a score that indicated how cheerful they felt and levels of anxiety and life satisfaction. In 12 years of researcher, the scientists found that those expressing positive emotions, on average, had a one-third reduction in coronary events. Among people with the highest risk for coronary events, there was nearly a 50 percent reduction.
Yanek says that cheerful personalities are probably temperaments that people are born with and may not be readily altered.
http://easyhealthoptions.com/alternative-medicine/the-emotion-that-fights-heart-attacks/
