Happiness cuts coronary heart disease risk

A new study published on Feb 18, 2010 issue of the European Heart Journal suggests positive emotions like feeling happy may help prevent coronary heart disease.

The study showed people with no positive emotion were 22 percent more likely to suffer ischaemic heart disease than those with a little positive emotion who were in turn at 22  percent increased risk of having coronary heart disease compared to those who had moderate positive affect.

Dr Karina Davidson at Columbia University Medical Center and colleagues found the association after they followed 1,739 healthy men and women for about ten years.

For the 1995 Nova Scotia Health Survey, participants were assessed at baseline for the degree of expression of positive emotions or known as positive affect including the experience of pleasurable emotions such as joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm and contentment; and the degree of experience of negative effect including depression, hostility, and anxiety.

The researchers found increased positive affect was associated with reduced risk of heart disease.  And occasional experience of negative affect did not affect the risk of coronary heart disease though.

Dr. Davidson explained those with positive affect may have longer periods of rest or relaxation physiologically or may recover more quickly from from stressors.

Researchers at Medical University Vienna in Austria reported in the Jul-Aug 2009 issue of Psychosomatics that anxiety is highly prevalent among patients with stable coronary heart disease.

Bankier B and colleagues found evidence suggesting that c-reactive protein may mediate the association between anxiety and higher risk of coronary heart disease.

The researchers compared 43 patients with coronary heart disease who suffered anxiety disorder to 43 patients with CHD but did not experience anxiety and found an association between CRP and anxiety.

By David Liu