(Press-News.org) People with cheerful temperaments are significantly less likely to suffer a coronary event such as a heart attack or sudden cardiac death, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.
Previous research has shown that depressed and anxious people are more likely to have heart attacks and to die from them than those whose dispositions are sunnier. But the Johns Hopkins researchers say their study shows that a general sense of well-being — feeling cheerful, relaxed, energetic and satisfied with life — actually reduces the chances of a heart attack.
A report on the research is published in the American Journal of Cardiology.
"If you are by nature a cheerful person and look on the bright side of things, you are more likely to be protected from cardiac events," says study leader Lisa R. Yanek, M.P.H., an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "A happier temperament has an actual effect on disease and you may be healthier as a result."
Yanek cautioned that cheerful personalities are likely part of the temperament we are born with, not something we can easily change. While some have suggested it's possible that people lucky enough to have such a trait are also more likely to take better care of themselves and have more energy to do so, Yanek says her research shows that people with higher levels of well-being still had many risk factors for coronary disease but had fewer serious heart events.
She emphasized that the mechanisms behind the protective effect of positive well-being remain unclear. She also noted that her research offers insights into the interactions between mind and body, and could yield clues to those mechanisms in the future.
For the study, Yanek and her colleagues first looked at data from GeneSTAR (Genetic Study of Atherosclerosis Risk), a 25-year Johns Hopkins project sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to determine the roots of heart disease in people with a family history of coronary disease. They analyzed information gathered from 1,483 healthy siblings of people who had coronary events before the age of 60 and who were followed for five to 25 years. Siblings of people with early-onset coronary artery disease (CAD) are twice as likely of developing it themselves.
Among other things, study participants filled out well-being surveys and received a score, on a scale of 0 to 110, which gauged cheerful mood, level of concern about health, whether they were relaxed as opposed to anxious, energy level and life satisfaction. Over the course of an average 12-year follow-up, the researchers documented 208 coronary events — heart attacks, sudden cardiac death, acute coronary syndrome, and the need for stents or bypass surgery — in the sibling group.
The researchers found that participants' positive well-being was associated with a one-third reduction in coronary events; among those deemed at the highest risk for a coronary event, there was nearly a 50 percent reduction. The findings took into account other heart disease risk factors such as age, smoking, diabetes, high cholesterol levels and high blood pressure.
To validate their result, the researchers then looked at similar information in a general population using data from 5,992 participants in the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). In this population, over an average 16-year follow-up, there were 1,226 coronary events (20.5 percent). They found that this group also benefitted from a cheerful temperament, which reduced their risk of a coronary event by 13 percent.
The findings held whether the participants were white or African-American, men or women.
###
The research was supported in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Nursing Research (NR02241), National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (R01 HL49762 and R01 HL59684) and National Center for Research Resources (M01 RR00052) to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine General Clinical Research Center.
Other Johns Hopkins researchers contributing to this study include Brian G. Kral, M.D., M.P.H.; Taryn F. Moy, M.S.; Dhananjay Vaidya, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., M.P.H.; Mariana Lazo, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.M.; Lewis C. Becker, M.D.; and Diane Becker, Sc.D., M.P.H.
For more information:
http://www.genestarstudy.com
Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM), headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is a $6.5 billion integrated global health enterprise and one of the leading health care systems in the United States. JHM unites physicians and scientists of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with the organizations, health professionals and facilities of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. JHM's mission is to improve the health of the community and the world by setting the standard of excellence in medical education, research and clinical care. Diverse and inclusive, JHM educates medical students, scientists, health care professionals and the public; conducts biomedical research; and provides patient-centered medicine to prevent, diagnose and treat human illness. JHM operates six academic and community hospitals, four suburban health care and surgery centers, and more than 30 primary health care outpatient sites. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in 1889, was ranked number one in the nation from 1990 to 2011 by U.S. News & World Report.
Media Contact: Stephanie Desmon
410-955-8665; sdesmon1@jhmi.edu
Helen Jones
410-502-9422; hjones49@jhmi.edu
END
COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— CEOs need to demonstrate strong leadership and good decision-making skills, but CEOs with over-confidence can involve their companies in riskier ventures and put investors' funds at risk, according to a new study from the University of Missouri, Georgia Tech University and the University of Texas-Arlington.
"Over-confident CEOs feel they have superior decision-making abilities and are more capable than their peers," said Stephen Ferris, professor of finance in the MU Trulaske College of Business. "Unfortunately, they tend to make decisions about mergers ...
Solving the "faint young sun paradox" -- explaining how early Earth was warm and habitable for life beginning more than 3 billion years ago even though the sun was 20 percent dimmer than today -- may not be as difficult as believed, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
In fact, two CU-Boulder researchers say all that may have been required to sustain liquid water and primitive life on Earth during the Archean eon 2.8 billion years ago were reasonable atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts believed to be present at the time and perhaps a dash of methane. The key ...
COLUMBIA, Mo. ¬— Some people possess a small number of cells in their bodies that are not genetically their own; this condition is known as microchimerism. It is difficult to determine potential health effects from this condition because of humans' relatively long life-spans. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found that microchimerism can be found in dogs as well. Jeffrey Bryan, an associate professor of oncology at the MU College of Veterinary Medicine and director of Comparative Oncology and Epigenetics Laboratory, says this discovery will help doctors ...
Low vitamin D blood levels are linked to greater risk of heart disease in whites and Chinese, but not in blacks and Hispanics, according to a study appearing this week in JAMA, a journal published by the American Medical Association.
Growing evidence has suggested that low blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin are associated with higher risk of developing coronary heart disease among whites. Few of these studies included substantial numbers of people from other races.
Vitamin D levels tend to be lower among people from other racial and ethnic minority groups, and some of ...
Using a new analytical methodology--a coupled micro-computed X-ray tomography (MicroCT) and microfluidic-based electrochemical analysis--researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are gaining new insights into electrode structure-performance relationships for energy conversion and storage devices.
"Electrodes play a vital role in all devices based on heterogeneous electrochemical reactions for energy conversion, energy storage, and chemical synthesis," explained Molly Jhong, a graduate student at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ...
Rockville, Md. — Vision researchers have developed new software that will analyze visual fields in an open-source platform to improve and encourage collaborative research among independent labs. An analysis of the free tool is presented in a Journal of Vision (JOV) paper, The visualFields package: A tool for analysis and visualization of visual fields.
In the paper, authors introduce and demonstrate the visualFields package, which can work separately or in conjunction with the Open Perimetry Interface — an open-source software developed by Andrew Turpin, PhD, and described ...
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL. -- The allergist's office might not be a child's favorite place to visit, but it is a place where they should be able to say how their asthma makes them feel. While children might rely on parents to tell their doctor about how they are feeling, according to a study released today, children should do most of the talking.
The study, published in the July issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), found that children with asthma report having a better quality ...
This news release is available in German. The economic crisis has put measurable pressure on birthrates in Europe over the last decade. On average, the more the unemployment rose, the greater the decrease in fertility compared to the number of children per women expected without the crisis. This is the result of a new study performed by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock, Germany. MPIDR demographers Michaela Kreyenfeld, Joshua Goldstein and Aiva Jasilioniene have just published their analysis together with Deniz Karaman Örsal of the ...
LA JOLLA, CA - Scientists studying cancer development have known about micronuclei for some time. These erratic, small extra nuclei, which contain fragments or whole chromosomes that were not incorporated into daughter cells after cell division, are associated with specific forms of cancer and are predictive of poorer prognosis.
In a new study, published on July 3 in Cell, a team of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies finds that disrupted micronuclei, which can trigger massive DNA damage on chromosomes, might play an even more active role in carcinogenesis ...
Relationship problems can keep us awake at night. But new research from UC Berkeley suggests that sleepless nights also can worsen lovers' fights.
UC Berkeley psychologists Amie Gordon and Serena Chen have found that people are much more likely to lash out at their romantic partners over relationship tensions after a bad night's sleep.
"Couples who fight more are less happy and less healthy," said Gordon, a doctoral student in psychology and lead author of the study published online in the journal, Social Psychological and Personality Science.
"Our research helps ...
