"Women who have an optimistic view on life are more likely to live longer," a US study said on Wednesday.
The study, which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, analyzed data information from year 2004 to 2012 from over 70,000 women enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study; it is a long-running US study tracking women's health through surveys every two years.
The researchers looked into details optimism and other factors which may cause how optimistic attitude may affect women's mortality risk, such as high blood pressure, diet, race and physical activity.
"It found the most optimistic women, or the top quartile, had a nearly 30 percent lower risk of dying from any of the diseases analyzed in the study compared with the least optimistic women, or the bottom quartile," one report noted.
"The most optimistic women had a 16 percent lower risk of dying from cancer; 38 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease; 39 percent lower risk of dying from stroke; 38 percent lower risk of dying from respiratory disease; and 52 percent lower risk of dying from infection," the article noted." Previous studies have linked optimism with reduced risk of early death from cardiovascular problems, but this was the first to find a link between optimism and reduced risk from other major causes."
"While most medical and public health efforts today focus on reducing risk factors for diseases, evidence has been mounting that enhancing psychological resilience may also make a difference," says Eric Kim, research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-lead author of the study.
"Our new findings suggest that we should make efforts to boost optimism, which has been shown to be associated with healthier behaviors and healthier ways of coping with life challenges."
"The study also found that healthy behaviors only partially explain the link between optimism and reduced mortality risk. One other possibility is that higher optimism directly impacts our biological systems," Kim says.
