Does Positive Attitude affect your Health

Being Optimistic or Pessimistic is a natural human trait that develops either through our upbringing and our genes. It is a well known fact believed by medical practitioners that positive attitude affects your health in a positive way. Usually we care only about our diet, exercise and sleep to live a healthy life, but positive attitude in our lifestyle also plays a major role for betterment of our health. This article will explain how our optimistic approach towards various aspects of life improves our health.

During past century our society has accepted the importance of psychological health. Prior to that people used to believe that psychological treatments are only meant for mentally sick or lunatic people. But now people know that diseases like depression and anxiety are common and every person faces it at least once in their life. Apart from medicines, counselling plays an important role in psychological treatments. Most of these counselings revolve around our thinking and attitude towards life. A counselor always try to make us think positive and being optimistic. The truth is that people with positive attitude are very less prone to any psychological disorder.

According to a study the chances of heart related issues are lesser in optimistic people. Even if there is some heart disease, optimistic people recover easily after hospitalization and require 50% less re-hospitalization. [1]

Optimism improves our immune system response. Even when a person with pessimistic approach is provided some counselling to think positive, the immune system response improves with behavior. [2]

A research done in Finland concluded that optimistic people are three times lesser prone to hypertension, even when risk factors like smoking, obesity, alcohol abuse, physical inactivity and family history are also taken into account. [1]

According to American Journal of Cardiology, apart from food positive behavior can also keep your cholesterol level low, thus improving your cardiovascular health. [3]

An American research concluded that people with most positive attitude are likely to have least blood pressure. [1]

A 2006 study found that optimistic people are least affected with viral infections, even if they are living in an area where the virus has spread. [1]

Several studies done in different parts of world concluded that optimistic people live longer as they have overall better health. [1]

Some researchers believe that a healthy and disease free body is most likely to be optimistic an hence optimistic people face lesser health issues. But once more fact is that so called optimistic people usually follow a healthy lifestyle, which might be responsible for better health. Whatever the matter is, either optimism results in healthy lifestyle or vice-versa, the fact is that positive attitude improves health.


Positive emotions that result from positive attitude last for a long time and help us in developing skills that help us further in life. Positive emotions help us in exploring possibilities. When a kid goes out to play with a happy mood, he/she learns physical skills by playing sports, learns social skills by making new friends and communicating with them and also develops creative approach. These positive skills developed by positive attitude help that child for all of his/her life. So positive approach towards life not only makes us healthy but also makes our life better.

A pessimist might live a long life sometimes, but chances of it being happy and healthy are very less. So be positive and make others too.

References:
[1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/optimism-and-your-health
[2] https://www.livescience.com/8158-optimism-boosts-immune-system.html
[3] https://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149%2813%2900388-3/abstract

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