The Relationship between Health and Happiness
You can imagine that people with a high sense of well-being are healthier in the future than those with a low sense of well-being. In fact, there is an experiment that synthesized and analyzed 150 papers on happiness and health. The conclusion of the paper was that happy people will be healthier in the future, and unhappy people will be unhealthier. (See table below.)
The 95% confidence interval for happiness is positive for both Lower and Upper. The 95% confidence interval for happiness is positive for both Lower and Upper, and negative for unhappiness, indicating that happiness has a positive impact on health and unhappiness has a similar negative impact on health.
Looking at the data more deeply, we can see how happiness specifically contributes to health.
Effects of Happiness on Health
So what is it about happiness that makes us healthy? It is the enhancement of immune response and pain tolerance. Surprising as it may seem, happiness has no significant effect on the cardiovascular system or physiological responses. It may contribute to our future health by improving our immune response, protecting us from external enemies, and alleviating stress.
Summary
In order to be healthy, you need to increase your sense of well-being first.
The reason for this.
This is because there exists a correlation between happiness and health, in which an increase in happiness improves health functions, and conversely, an increase in unhappiness decreases health functions to the same extent.
Specifically, because as happiness increases, immune function improves and stress tolerance increases.
The specific ways to increase your sense of well-being will be posted in another article to come, so please refer to that as well.
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