Anger or stress wont increase your risk of dying

Over the years, we've been made to believe that being angry or stressed increases our risk of dying.
But the decade-long analysis, published in the
Lancet , said previous studies had just confused
cause and effect.
However, experts argued that unhappiness in
childhood may still have a lasting impact.
A series of studies had shown that how happy
people are, strongly predicts how long they are
going to live.
Ideas included detrimental changes in stress
hormones or the immune system resulting in a
higher risk of death.
But the research team in the UK and Australia said
those studies failed to deal with reverse causality -
namely, that people who are ill are not very happy.
Entrenched
Participants in the Million Women Study were asked
to regularly rate their health, happiness and levels of
stress.
The results showed that whether people were
"never", "usually" or "mostly" happy had no impact
on their odds of dying during the duration of the
study once other factors such as health or whether
they smoked were taken into account.
Dr Bette Liu, one of the researchers at the University
of New South Wales in Australia, said: "Illness
makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn't
make you ill.
"We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress
on mortality, even in a 10-year study of a million
women."
Co-author Prof Sir Richard Peto, from the University
of Oxford, said light smokers had double the risk of
an early death and regular smokers had three times
the risk of dying during the study period, but that
happiness was "irrelevant".
He said it could have indirect effects if people
started consuming large amounts of alcohol or
massively overeating, but happiness itself "does not
have any material, direct, effect on mortality".
But he warned the myth may be too entrenched to
shake off: "People will still believe stress causes
heart attacks after this story has been and gone.
"It isn't true, but it suits people to believe it."
In a commentary, Dr Philipe de Souto Barreto and
professor Yves Rolland from the University Hospital
of Toulouse in France, said: "Further research from
a lifecourse perspective is needed since happiness
during critical periods, such as childhood, could
have important consequences on health in
adulthood."

Photo courtesy; the times