What is the impact of happiness on health?Can happiness lead us to good health? This was the hypothesis raised at a symposium on health science and happiness at the New Research Building on the Longwood campus at Harvard. The event also highlighted that modern health care is not about health, it is about the disease.
However, the symposium highlighted the importance of focusing on the positive side of events, for example, raised the idea of focusing on assets that keep us healthy or help us recover faster from illness and injury.
- In this regard.
- Dr.
- Laura Kubzansky said that “there is an urgent need to conduct more studies to understand these positive assets and how to promote them among millions of people around the world.
- “.
“Medical and psychological practice and research have traditionally focused on diseases and deficits that cause health problems. “
It all started when the Lee Kum Kee family donated to create a new health and happiness center at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health. With this, it would be possible to fund a center to study how to increase happiness and health in everyday life.
Specifically, the established premise was to discover how happiness can have a positive effect on health, of course, this would be done by treating happiness as one of the determining factors of existence, not as a nice phrase.
Laura Kubzansky, co-director of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness at Harvard Chan School, told the symposium that it has long been an opaque field of study, but provides knowledge that supports the idea that health, well-being and happiness are intrinsically linked.
Francesca Dominici, research associate dean at Harvard Chan School, ensured that “the new center will focus on the development of rigorous science,” on how positive psychological and social factors can influence health and how these outcomes can translate into public policies with the aim of improving overall health?
At the event, whose central focus was whether happiness can lead to health, one of the topics of discussion was how to translate the results into public policies, which would reduce the gap between academic institutions and people’s needs on their daily journey.
“Just as the disease triggers a number of physiological reactions, it is increasingly evident that happiness and well-being are also linked to bodily processes. “- Laura Kubzansky-
Being happy leads not only to a state of absolute psychic satisfaction, but more and more progress is being made to show that it also has a great influence on physical health, in this way the substantial change from a state of happiness to a state of sadness can be verified even on a chemical level.
Happiness is felt and transferred to the whole body as countless endorphins are released from the spinal cord and bloodstream every time we are with our loved ones, listen to our favorite music or just walk. In this way, we see an improvement in our mood. and even a decrease in the intensity of certain pains.
Andrew Steptoe, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at University College London, noted that there is a link between wellness and health measures, as people who benefit most from life not only live longer, but age.
However, Harvard University reports that an additional study has shown that people who are more satisfied with life are more likely to be physically active, eat healthier, and wear sunscreen, and are less likely to smoke.
In addition, less happy people have been shown to have higher levels of fat and cortisol, the hormone that generates stress; However, despite the respective advances in studies on the impact of happiness on health, many questions remain unanswered.
Concern for happiness is a condition inherent in human existence. However, this concern must coexist with many others that are not always compatible.
Understanding that most of our security is in the present and not in the future is a long-term task, however once we really start working with this idea or approach, problems tend to turn into challenges, opportunities for growth and carefree. .