Happiness may not be the key to a longer life


That's the conclusion of the latest attempt to find out if happy people live longer. Previous studies have linked happiness to longevity but researchers now say there's no such scientific connection.

The results are based on questionnaires from more than 715,000 British women aged 50 to 69 who were enrolled in a national breast cancer screening program in the late 1990s.


Scientists found the death rate among unhappy women was the same as the death rate among women who were happy. The research was published online Wednesday in the medical journal Lancet.

"It's such a common belief that stress and unhappiness causes death and disease but it's actually the other way around," said Richard Peto, a professor at the University of Oxford who was one of the study's authors. "People should focus on the real issues that shorten their lives, like smoking and obesity."

In an accompanying commentary, French scientists suggested that the results might not be the same in men, since "men and women probably define happiness differently." The researchers said the latest paper was the biggest-ever to evaluate happiness and noted it accounted for potential confounding factors. Some previous studies among older adults have found that women were grumpier than men.



But not everyone was convinced by the study's conclusions.

Hazel Newton, 69, said she believed having a positive attitude was instrumental to her recovery from a stroke several years ago.


