Welcome to the Good Life Chronicles, where living a good life takes center stage.
For years, the story has gone one way. Get healthy, and you'll feel better. Eat right, move more, sleep well, and happiness follows as the predicted side effect.
But, with new interest in longevity these days, it turns out that's only half the story.
New research is showing the arrow points both ways. Feeling good doesn't just follow from being healthy. It actually helps predict it. People who report higher life satisfaction (i.e., happiness) have lower blood pressure, fewer heart problems, and better odds against a whole list of conditions down the road. They also tend to smoke less, eat better, move more, as well as stick to medical advice more closely, which only adds to the effect.
And the effect holds over time. Researchers tracked people's emotional lives for close to two decades and found the following: People whose mood stayed low and kept declining had nearly double the risk of dying compared to people whose mood stayed consistently good. But, people who started out struggling but improved over time in their levels of happiness ended up with the best odds of anyone in the study, better than the people who were doing fine the whole way through.
In other words, it's never too late to turn it around, and how happy you are really does matter.
Researchers are finding that wellbeing isn't just a cute story next to the real medicine. Across studies, a one point increase in wellbeing was linked to a meaningfully lower risk of dying in the years that followed, even after accounting for depression and other mental health struggles. That's a big claim. It means wellbeing is doing something on its own, not just standing in for the absence of illness.
We've spent so much energy trying to optimize the physical side of a long life. Eat this, not that. Move more. Sleep better. Track your steps. V02 max… All useful. All still worth doing.
But if feeling good is doing some of that same work in the background, then the question becomes bigger than metrics around "what should I eat" or "how much should I walk". Instead, it becomes about daily experience. In other words, “what makes me feel good and am I making room for it?”, as part of that same project.
And as you well know by now, we can measure wellbeing just like a blood pressure reading and we can put it on a chart the same way. By using validated scales to track life satisfaction over time, as well as the balance of positive to negative emotions on any given day. These measures belong in your actual medical file, right alongside the biomarkers, because they move independently and tell a different part of the story.
You don't need a clinic to start noticing your own pattern. A quick daily check-in, a number out of ten for how the day felt, adds up to something useful over a few weeks.
Here’s something to sit with these next 2 weeks. Pick one moment today that made you feel good, even if it was short, and notice what it was. Do more of that on purpose (unless it’s bad for you of course, so no, this does not apply to smoking).
Do you think of your mood as part of your health, or as something separate from it?
Share your thoughts in the comments here or below depending on your platform. Remember to sign in to leave a comment.
While you’re here!
If you like the idea of happiness and feel someone in your life should too, pass along this newsletter. They can sign up here.
Why not learn the skills of good living for yourself? Sign up to my course here, you can also “gift” the course to others.
Finally, do you work somewhere in the GCC that could use a little uplifting? See my programs for organizations here.
Have a great week and remember: Life is short, make it matter.
Dr. Louise
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