http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6004579/Optimists-less-likely-to-suffer-heart-attacks-or-die.htmlBeing an optimist really is good for your health and can significantly cut the chances of suffering a heart attack or even dying, a new study from the University of Pittsburgh suggests. Researchers found that people who looked for the positives in life tended to be in better health than pessimists."As a physician, I'd like to see people try to reduce their negativity in general," said Dr Hilary A Tindle, from the university."The majority of evidence suggests that sustained, high degrees of negativity are hazardous to health."In the largest study to date of the effect of positive thinking on health, the researchers looked at the results of more 97,000 women monitored as part of a long term study.They found that, compared to pessimists, optimists had a nine per cent lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14 per cent lower risk of dying from any cause, after eight years of follow-up.Simple questions were used to define who was an optimist.For example, the team designated someone as an optimist if they tended to answer yes to statements such as "in unclear times, I usually expect the best".Pessimists, by contrast, tended to answer yes to statements like "if something can go wrong for me, it will."Although the team say that it is unclear why optimists are more healthy, their findings also suggest that they were less likely to be depressed and to smoke and were more likely to be younger, to have a higher level of education and to earn more, as well as to be more religious, than the pessimists in the study."This study is a very reasonable stepping stone to future research in this area – both on potential mechanisms of how attitudes may affect health, and for randomised controlled trials to examine if attitudes can be changed to improve health," Dr Tindle said.The findings were reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
