Study Of More Than 150,000 Women Says This Simple Habit Could Increase Longevity

Would you classify yourself as a glass half empty or glass half full person? If you answered half full, new studies have actually revealed that optimism in women is tied to healthy aging and even “exceptional longevity” in a racially diverse group of participants. Put simply? Happy people might actually live longer.

While many people consider optimism and pessimism an inherent part of their identity, making intentional changes to see the silver linings in life may help you live longer and even have a higher quality of life. Let's dive into the recent findings.

There have been former studies on the same topic, which suggested that a positive outlook on life may contribute to healthy aging and increase longevity—however, the participants were mostly white individuals. Conversely, this wider-ranging study from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) cohort was recently published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society and thankfully explored the concept on a broad range of participants of varying ethnic profiles. 

In this group of 161,808 women between the ages of 50 and 79, the study revealed firstly that “women with higher optimism levels were more frequently non-Hispanic White, had high education levels...had somewhat healthier lifestyles, but did not differ meaningfully with regard to age and marital status." What was especially interesting: They were also less likely to report health issues like low mood.

The study authors recognized that participants in this trial “had higher education levels than the average U.S. population.” This may impact quality of life and therefore optimism levels on the whole, so it would be worth expanding this study even further to include a wider range of education levels among participants to capture an even broader set of demographics.

Additionally, the categorization of race and ethnicity is still rather broad within this study, and the authors agree that breaking down the groupings even further could provide more clarity as to the happiness levels of different groups of women. 

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