Higher levels of optimism were associated with longer lifespan and life beyond age 90 in women of all racial and ethnic groups, in a study by researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
The elixir of longevity is optimism
“Although optimism itself may be influenced by structural social factors, such as race and ethnicity, our research suggests that the benefits of optimism may also apply to different groups,” said Hayami Koga, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard Chan School and lead author of the study.
“Much previous work has focused on deficits or risk factors that increase the risk of disease and premature death. Our findings suggest that it is useful to focus on positive psychological factors, such as optimism, as possible new ways to promote longevity and healthy aging across countries. heterogeneous groups.”
The study was published in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society.
In a previous study, the research team determined that optimism was linked to a longer lifespan and exceptional longevity, defined as living beyond 85 years of age.
Because they had looked primarily at white populations in the previous study, Koga and his colleagues expanded the participant pool in the current study to include women of all racial and ethnic groups.
According to Koga, including diverse populations in research is important for public health because these groups have higher mortality rates than white populations and there is limited research on them to help guide health policy decisions.
For this study, researchers analyzed data and survey responses from 159,255 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, which included postmenopausal women in the United States. Women enrolled at ages 50-79 from 1993 to 1998 and were followed until age 26.
Among participants, the most optimistic 25% had a 5.4% longer chance of living and a 10% greater chance of live beyond 90 years compared to the less optimistic 25%.
The researchers also found no interaction between optimism and any category of race and ethnicity, and these trends held true after taking into account demographics, chronic conditions and depression.
Lifestyle factors, such as regular exercise and a healthy diet, account for less than a quarter of the optimism-life expectancy association, indicating that other factors may be at play.
Koga said the study’s findings could redefine how people view decisions that affect their health.
“We tend to focus on the negative risk factors that affect our health,” Koga said. “It’s also important to think about positive resources like optimism that can be beneficial to our health, especially if we see that these benefits are found across racial and ethnic groups.”
Optimism can promote emotional well-being by limiting the frequency with which you experience stressful situations
A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging, but it is unclear how optimism affects health.
When it comes to dealing with everyday stressors, such as household chores or arguments with others, a new study has found that being more or less optimistic makes no difference in how older men react emotionally or recover from them. stress factors. . However, optimism appears to promote emotional well-being by limiting how often older men experience stressful situations or by changing how they interpret situations as stressful.
“This study tests one possible explanation by assessing whether more optimistic people manage daily stress more constructively and therefore enjoy better emotional well-being,” said corresponding author Lewina Lee, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist at the University of Los Angeles National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. of the VA Boston Healthcare System and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
Researchers followed 233 older men who first completed an optimism questionnaire; 14 years later, they reported daily stressors along with positive and negative moods on eight consecutive evenings up to three times over eight years.
The researchers found that more optimistic men reported not only less negative mood but also more positive mood (as well as simply not feeling negative). They also reported having fewer stressors, which was not related to their more positive mood but explained their lower levels of negative mood.
Although studies have increasingly supported the idea of optimism as a resource that can promote good health and longevity, we know very little about the underlying mechanisms.
“Stress, on the other hand, is known to have a negative impact on our health. By analyzing whether optimistic people handle daily stressors differently, our findings add to the knowledge about how optimism can promote good health as people age,” says Lee.
Greater optimism linked to lower odds of pain after deployment
For U.S. soldiers, higher levels of optimism are associated with lower odds of reporting new pain after deployment, according to a study published online Feb. 8 in JAMA Network Open.
Afton L. Hassett, Psy.D., of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and colleagues conducted a longitudinal cohort study involving 20,734 U.S. Army soldiers to examine the correlation between pre-deployment optimism and onset of new suffering after deployment.
The researchers found that 37.3 percent of soldiers reported pain in at least one new area of the body after deployment: 25.3, 23.1, and 12.1 percent reported new back pain, new joint pain, and new joint pain, respectively. new frequent headaches. Even after adjusting for demographic, military, and combat factors, each unit increase in optimism was correlated with significantly lower odds of reporting any new pain after deployment (odds ratio, 0.89).
Compared to soldiers with high optimism, soldiers with low optimism were more likely to report new pain at any of the three sites (odds ratio, 1.35). When comparing the moderate optimism and low optimism groups versus the high optimism and moderate optimism groups, there was a greater increase in pain.
“Data from Army psychological assessments, such as the Global Assessment Tool, could be used to identify soldiers with low levels of optimism who might benefit from programs aimed at strengthening optimism,” the authors write. “These strategies could help reduce the consequences of pain, one of the most common and costly outcomes of implementation.”
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