Study Finds Negative People Live Shorter Lives Than Optimists.
Optimists are more likely to live longer than those who have a more negative approach to life, a US study has found. Positive people were more likely to live to the age of 85 or more.
This scale examines the positive and negative explanations people give for events in their life. For both men and women, higher levels of optimism were associated with a longer life span and “exceptional longevity,” which the researchers defined as surviving to 85.
The social determinants of health likely explain a lot of these disparities. For example, those with the shortest life expectancies in the US tend to have the most poverty, face the most food insecurity, and have less or no access to healthcare, all factors that contribute to lower life expectancy.
Here's a good reason to turn that frown upside down: Optimistic people live as much as 15% longer than pessimists, according to a new study spanning thousands of people and 3 decades.
It may also lengthen your life. Higher levels of optimism are associated with a longer lifespan and a greater chance of living past 90, according to a new study of nearly 160,000 women of different races and backgrounds.
Optimists tend to feel happier in general, and pessimists tend to feel less happy. If you're a pessimist, it's always possible to learn how to become an optimist. Sometimes enduring a crisis provides you with just the right motivation to do that.
Women's life expectancy was 79 years in the U.S. in 2021, while men's was about 73, according to CDC data. The U.S. has a higher rate of avoidable deaths, which is measured as death before the age of 75, among men than any comparable country.
Being under heavy stress shortens their life expectancy by 2.8 years.
But avoiding hostility will add years to your life, suggests research from the University College London in the U.K. Again, telomeres are responsible: Hostile thoughts seem to shorten these cellular structures, leading to premature aging of cells—and you.
The research looked at flickers of electrical energy in the brain that make up brain waves. Researchers associated some patterns with calmness and others with tension, stress, and anxiety. They found that people with the calmest brain regions also had the healthiest biomarkers, indicative of a longer life.
Spending time with negative people can be the fastest way to ruin a good mood. Their pessimistic outlooks and gloomy attitude can decrease our motivation and change the way we feel. But allowing a negative person to dictate your emotions gives them too much power in your life.
Constant exposure to such negativity can make deep inroads into your bank of positivity, leading you to either become negative—diffident, anxious, and distrustful—yourself, or to become indifferent, uncaring, or even mean towards the negative person.
It's natural to feel more pessimistic when things aren't going so well in our lives. Regular or even constant negative thinking can also be a sign of anxiety, depression, stress or low self-esteem. This sounds a bit strange, but negativity can also be contagious.
If you have a negative attitude, you're more likely to negatively impact everything around you. By taking active steps to cultivate positivity, you can counteract and change a negative attitude. Let go of expectations. Negativity often begins with expectations of yourself or others.
People exposed to chronic stress age rapidly. The telomeres in their cells of all types shorten faster.
This long-term ongoing stress can increase the risk for hypertension, heart attack, or stroke. Repeated acute stress and persistent chronic stress may also contribute to inflammation in the circulatory system, particularly in the coronary arteries, and this is one pathway that is thought to tie stress to heart attack.
Many factors affect longevity, and the Yale research indicates that chronic stress can shorten one's lifespan. Stress was already known to exacerbate physical health problems, such as increased risk for heart attack or diabetes.
Early death, also called premature death, occurs earlier than the average age of death in a population. In the United States, that age is around 75 years old. A lot of illness can happen in the first 74 years of life, yet the majority of early deaths have just a handful of causes.
Individuals should plan for living well beyond the average – to age 95 or even 100 – especially those in good health. For non-smokers in excellent health, there is almost one in three chance that women will live to age 95 or beyond and one in five chance that men will live to age 95 or beyond.
Life expectancy for men and women
A male child born in the United States today will live to be 74.5 years old on average. This puts the male citizens of the US in 45th place in this ranking. On average, US women are 5.7 years older, reaching an age of 80.2.
Key points. Intelligent people are more aware of a situation's complexities and so are more likely to worry and/or be pessimistic.
Pessimism Is Harmful To Your Mental Health. Although it isn't technically a mental health disorder, pessimistic behaviors may closely mimic symptoms of anxiety, depression, and more. Pessimistic thoughts and emotions are unhealthy and can cause suffering for those who experience them.
One key difference between pessimism and depression is that the former is a way of thinking (a cognitive style), whereas depression is a mental condition that impacts several aspects of a person's life. Pessimists are vulnerable to feeling sad and anxious.