When you think about the future, do you expect good or bad things to happen? If you weigh in on the “good” side, you’re an optimist. And that has positive implications for your health in later life. Multiple studies show a strong association between higher levels of optimism and a reduced risk of conditions such as heart disease, stroke, and cognitive impairment. Several studies have also linked optimism with greater longevity. One of the latest, published this year, comes from researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in collaboration with colleagues at other universities. It found that older women who scored highest on measures of optimism lived 4.4 years longer, on average, than those with the lowest scores. Results held true across races and ethnicities.
WHY WOULD OPTIMISM MAKE SUCH A DIFFERENCE?
Experts advance various explanations: People who are optimistic cope better with the challenges of daily life and are less likely to experience stress than people with less positive attitudes. They’re more likely to eat well and exercise, and they often have stronger networks of family and friends who can provide assistance. Also, people who are optimistic tend to engage more effectively in problem-solving strategies and to be better at regulating their emotions. Of course, a feedback loop is at play here: People may be more likely to experience optimism if they enjoy good health and a good quality of life. But optimism isn’t confined to those who are doing well. Studies suggest that it is a genetically heritable trait and that it can be cultivated through concerted interventions.
WHAT DOES OPTIMISM LOOK LIKE IN PRACTICE?
For answers, I talked to several older adults who identify as optimists but who don’t take this characteristic for granted. Instead, it’s a choice they make every day.
Patricia Reeves, 73, Oklahoma City. “I’ve had a fairly good life, but I’ve had my share of traumas, like everyone,” said Reeves, a widow of seven years who lives alone. “I think it’s my faith and my optimism that’s pulled me through.” A longtime teacher and school principal, Reeves retired to care for her parents and her second husband, a Baptist minister, before they died. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, “I’ve been developing my spirituality.” When I asked what optimism meant to her, Reeves said: “You can see the good in each situation, or you can see the negative. When something isn’t going the way I wish, I prefer to ask myself, ‘What am I learning from this? What part did I play in this, and am I repeating patterns of behavior? How can I change?’” As for the challenges that come with aging — the loss of friends and family, health issues — Reeves spoke of optimism as a “can-do” attitude that keeps her going. “You don’t spend your time concentrating on your health or thinking about your aches and pains. You take them in as a fact, and then you let them go,” she said. “Or if you’ve got a problem you can solve, you figure out how to solve it, and you move on to tomorrow.” “There’s always something to be grateful for, and you focus on that.”
Grace Harvey, 100, LaGrange, Georgia. “I look for the best to happen under any circumstances,” said Harvey, a retired teacher and a devoted Baptist. “You can work through any situation with the help of God.” Her parents, a farmer and a teacher in Georgia, barely earned enough to get by. “Even though you would classify us as poor, I didn’t think of myself as poor,” she said. “I just thought of myself as blessed to have parents doing the best they could.” Today, Harvey lives in a mobile home and teaches Sunday school. She never married or had children, but she was surrounded by loving family members and former students at her 100th birthday party in October. “Not having my own family, I was able to touch the lives of many others,” she said. “I feel grateful for God letting me live this long: I still want to be around to help somebody.”
Ron Fegley, 82, Placer County, California. “I’m positive about the future because I think in the long run things keep getting better,” said Fegley, a retired physicist who lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills with his wife. “Science is a very important part of my life, and science is always on the upwards path,” he continued. “People may have the wrong ideas for a while, but eventually new experiments and data come along and correct things.” Fegley tends a small orchard where he grows peaches, cherries, and pears. “We don’t know what’s going to happen; no one does,” he told me. “But we enjoy our life currently, and we’re just going to go on enjoying it as much as we can.”
Anita Lerek, over 65, Toronto. “I was a very troubled younger person,” said Lerek, who declined to give her exact age. “Some of that had to do with the fact my parents were Holocaust survivors and joy was not a major part of their menu. They struggled a lot, and I was full of resentment.” When I asked her about optimism, Lerek described exploring Buddhism and learning to take responsibility for her thoughts and actions. “Mine is a cultivated optimism,” she told me. “I go to my books — Buddhist teachings, the Talmud — they’ve taught me a lot. You face all your demons, and you cultivate a garden of wisdom and projects and emotional connections.” At this point in life, “I’m grateful for every moment, every experience, because I know it could end any moment,” said Lerek, a lawyer and entrepreneur who writes poetry and still works part time. “It boils down to, ‘Is the glass half-empty or half-full?’ I choose the fullness.”
Katharine Esty, 88, Concord, Massachusetts. When Esty fell into a funk after turning 80, she looked for a guide to what to expect in the decade ahead. One didn’t exist, so she wrote “Eightysomethings: A Practical Guide to Letting Go, Aging Well, and Finding Unexpected Happiness.” For the project, Esty, a social psychologist and psychotherapist, interviewed 128 people in their 80s. “The more people I talked with, the happier I became,” she told me. “People were doing interesting things, leading interesting lives, even though they were coping with a lot of losses. “Not only was I learning stuff, having this purpose and focus brought me a tremendous amount of joy. My vision of what was possible in old age was greatly expanded.” Part of what Esty learned is the importance of “letting go of our inner vision of what our life should be and being open to what’s really happening.” For example, after stomach surgery last year, Esty needed physical therapy and had to use a walker. “I had always prided myself on being a very active person, and I had to accept my vulnerability,” she said. Similarly, although her 87-year-old boyfriend thought he’d spend his retirement fishing in Maine, he can’t walk well now, and that’s not possible. “I have come to think that you choose your attitude, and optimism is an attitude,” said Esty, who lives in a retirement community. “Now that I’m 88, my task is to live in the present and believe that things will be better, maybe not in my lifetime but decades from now. Life will prevail, the world will go on — it’s a sort of trust, I think." Life is full of ups and downs. You can’t control that. But what you can control is how you handle those ups and downs. The way you approach challenges or setbacks affects more than just how you feel, or what you expect; it has a direct impact on your health. A holistic understanding of the human body includes an awareness that feelings and mental states are not divorced from our physical beings. They are in fact physical phenomena that we experience via chemical interactions in our brains and throughout our bodies. The way we think impacts the way we feel, which in turn impacts the way our body's function. Today we’re going to have a look at the health benefits of optimism (including how it affects your bone health), and the science that explains why positivity helps people stay healthier and live longer. Of course we’re not all naturally optimistic, but you can work on shifting your thinking to a more positive place. We’ll go through a list of strategies for becoming an optimist and becoming healthier in the process! Don’t forget that bone health is inextricably linked to whole health, and in the fight against fractures, you need every tool at your disposal. Today’s tool is optimism. If you’re thinking, “oh, that’ll NEVER work,” then you might need today’s article most of all!
OPTIMISTS HAVE HEALTHIER HEARTS:
In several studies, which we’ll look at closer momentarily, participants who showed greater optimism were found to recover more fully and swiftly from coronary artery bypass surgery, were less likely to have heart attacks, and had lower blood pressure. To conduct a study with these sorts of results it is imperative to find a way to measure optimism. There are two systems commonly used to evaluate optimism levels. The first is dispositional optimism and the other is explanatory style. Dispositional optimism is often measured with something called the 12-Item Life Orientation Test. This series of questions measures someone’s positive expectations for their future. It touches upon multiple areas of life to avoid individual differences in the actual details of subject’s lives. A measurement of explanatory style evaluates the way in which a person conveys good or bad news. The pessimist exhibits a particular set of hallmarks: taking the blame or feeling responsible for whatever has gone wrong, assuming that things will not improve or change, and accepting that bad news will have dire consequences in all areas of their life. On the other hand, an optimist exhibits the opposite: not feeling responsible for bad news or accepting it as permanent or likely to cause other negative outcomes. The optimist takes credit for good news, in contrast, and sees the positive result as likely to continue and to create other good outcomes along the way. The studies that follow use methods of personality testing like those above to determine who is a pessimist and who is an optimist. Scientists then compare the outcomes of specific and consistent health scenarios to see if there are differences between the two groups.
A study conducted by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Psychology set out to determine whether optimism might be a predictor of lower rates of rehospitalization after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. They determined which of the 309 patients in the cohort were quantifiably optimists, and then followed all of their recoveries after surgery.1
It turned out that the optimistic patients were:
“…significantly less likely to be rehospitalized for a broad range of aggregated problems (including postsurgical sternal wound infections, angina, myocardial infarction, and the need for another bypass surgery or percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) generally indicative of a poor response to the initial surgery.”1
Furthermore, sociodemographic and medical differences didn’t matter, nor did relative self-esteem, depression, and neuroticism. Optimism as an independent trait had a positive impact on how effective the surgery was for patients, and how well they recovered.
CONVERSELY, PESSIMISM CAN KILL YOU:
Another study, this one conducted in Finland, examined the impact of pessimism and optimism on risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) among people middled aged and older. The researchers followed three cohorts of different age groups, 52-56, 62-66 and 72-76.2
After establishing a medical baseline at the beginning of the study, the researchers personally interviewed each participant four times over the course of the ten years. In the very first meeting a widely respected test (the revised Life Orientation Test) was completed to determine each person’s level of dispositional optimism or pessimism. Then, over the subsequent meetings, new cases of coronary heart disease were measured. The results were incredibly clear:
“Those who developed coronary heart disease during the ten-year follow-up were significantly more pessimistic at baseline than the other subjects… among men in the highest quartile of pessimism, the risk for CHD was approximately four-fold that of the men in the lowest quartile. Optimism did not seem to have any role in the risk for developing CHD.”2
Cardiovascular events are the most common cause of death in the developed world. This study provides an incredibly valuable indicator that doctors could use to help establish which of their patients are most likely to develop CHD. It also shows that the bar for receiving a positive health benefit isn’t that high. The Finnish subjects didn’t need to be full blown optimists to fall into the group less likely to have heart problems, they just had to have brighter outlooks than true pessimists. It’s useful to remember that on a journey of change, every step makes a difference. If you’re trying to become an optimist, even if you haven’t made it all the way to the brighter side of thinking, the progress you have made is already helping your heart stay healthy!
KEEPING YOUR CHIN UP CAN KEEP YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE DOWN:
A study published in 2000 builds upon the work of studies like those above that observe the negative health results of pessimists, and the positive outcomes of optimists, by digging into the relationship between hopelessness and hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure). Focusing on middle-aged men, the study culled a cohort of 616 subjects who initially had healthy blood pressure. They were given a medical evaluation and a series of psychological questionnaires at the baseline meeting, and at a follow-up meeting four years later.3
Men that showed high levels of hopelessness at the baseline meeting were three times more likely to become hypertensive during those four intervening years than the men who were not hopeless. Moderate levels of hopelessness showed a slightly elevated risk, but the increase wasn’t considered statistically significant, so again we see that even a little positivity makes a big difference.3
This study is by no means an outlier. Similar results were achieved in prior experiments, as well as by a large study in the US that showed hopelessness to be a predictor of increased risk of nonfatal ischemic heart disease in a cohort including both men and women.4
OPTIMISM MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE:
This study balances out the male-leaning results of the last two we’ve looked at. Researchers here tapped into the massive data resource of the Nurses Health Study, which collected comprehensive health data for 70,021 women. After a dispositional optimism measurement in 2004, all-cause and cause-specific mortality rates were assessed from 2006 to 2012.5
A higher degree of optimism resulted in a lower mortality risk.5 Quite simply, the more positive the subject was, the more likely she was to still be alive 8 years later. The causes of death were diverse, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and infection, suggesting that the beneficial effects of positivity go well beyond established improved cardiovascular health.
This study concludes:
“Given that optimism was associated with numerous causes of mortality, it may provide a valuable target for new research on strategies to improve health.”5
That target is the one we’re aiming for today, and even though your doctor may never have offered this method of improving your health (or saving your life!) we’ll have a look at some strategies that will help you increase your positivity and become the optimist you want to be.
WHAT MAKES OPTIMISM SO IMPACTFUL?
Savers have a healthy habit of curiosity and questioning, so you’re probably wondering why optimism has the impacts these studies prove. The studies themselves show the results, but they aren’t built to reveal the mechanism; that requires some informed speculation and deductive reasoning. Skeptics among you might suspect that optimism is actually the result of good health, and not the other way around. While it stands to reason that those who are in good health might be more inclined to expect further good health, these studies account for that possibility. They take into account pre-existing medical conditions and found that someone’s prior health didn’t change the positive impact of a sunny outlook.
One explanation offered is that optimists practice different, healthier behaviors than pessimists, suggesting that they get better medical care, build stronger social support networks, and make healthier life choices. Some studies have shown that optimists are more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke, and more frequently follow medical advice than pessimists.6 However, optimism doesn’t correlate with better diets, or leaner bodies, and even when cardiovascular risk factors are accounted for, the benefits of optimism still take effect.
One of the most compelling arguments brings the benefits of optimism into the territory of building stronger bones. A 2013 study published in the journal Health Psychology found that dispositional optimism leads to reduced levels of cortisol secretion.6 This is the result of the perception of stress. Pessimists tended to perceive situations as more stressful than optimists did, leading to higher cortisol levels.
As Savers know, high levels of the fight-or-flight hormone cortisol cause bone loss. Cortisol should sweep in for a brief period to help you overcome an obstacle, then abate to allow normal body function. But when cortisol levels are high for prolonged periods, it wreaks havoc on many body systems, including bone formation and the processes that support it. Since optimists tend to produce less cortisol, they should experience more uninterrupted bone formation. This also helps explain the other health and life-extension benefits found by the studies above.
Additionally, another bone harming state, inflammation, is linked to pessimism.7 The mechanic here likely has to do with an association with lower levels of a inflammation markers C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, which predict the risk of heart attack and stroke.
HOW TO BECOME AN OPTIMIST?
Now that we’ve established that the benefits of optimism stretch from improved bone health to a longer, healthier life, you certainly have the motivation to take action. No matter how sunny your disposition, there are undoubtedly a few techniques below that you could employ to stay upbeat. If you’re inclination is a little darker, take heart, these methods can be used in any combination to help shift your outlook bit by bit. It might not be easy, and it might not come quickly, but persistence will pay off if you keep at it!
1. LET OPTIMISM IN:
It’s easy to feel burdened by having to produce an optimistic viewpoint if it isn’t your natural inclination. Don’t take it all on by yourself! You deserve all the help you can get, and you can find it all around you. Surround yourself with optimistic people. Find that cheerful friend who always sees the silver lining, and include them in more parts of your life. Positive people tend to share their energy and will support you in a difficult situation, providing an alternative viewpoint. You just have to make the effort to be receptive to their upbeat response and resist the urge to argue against a positive point of view. Positive information has an impact on your own perceptions. Do you tend to get your news or entertainment from downcast sources? Try to switch them out for some inspirational and upbeat sources of information and input. Find a positive blog, podcast, or video series and make it a part of your routine.
2. OBSERVE YOURSELF:
Before you can change your responses, you must be sure you’re seeing them. Pay attention to what you say and take note when they’re negative. Keep a daily log of negative thoughts, assumptions and conclusions. This will help you figure out where and how your negativity manifests, and that will allow you to make specific targeted goals for turning those thoughts and feelings around.
3. SWITCH OUT A NEGATIVE STATEMENT FOR A POSITIVE ONE:
This is going to feel weird at first and might make you feel like you’re not being your true self. That’s fine. If you’re going to shift your natural inclinations, you might need to “fake it till you make it” for a little while. When you catch yourself about to say something negative, no matter how small or large, important or trivial, stop and think of something positive to say instead. If it’s raining and grey and your inclination is to remark that the weather is terrible, try instead remarking that it’s going to feel that much nicer when the sun returns. Small changes can add up to a big difference!
4. ACTIVELY MAKE THE ARGUMENT FOR POSITIVELY:
If you’re struggling with a negative thought, or a pessimistic prediction, put it on paper. Write down the negative thought and then make columns for arguments for and against the validity of that thought. If you’re a pessimist, it will be easy to find reasons to support a negative thought. The goal here isn’t for either side to “win” but to create a space for you to do the work of finding arguments against the negative thought. For every reason you can find in favor of your negative impulse, put in the time and effort to find a reason that negative thought isn’t valid or useful. It might be hard at first, but as you get better at it, you’ll be building the skills of an optimist.
5. FIGURE OUT THE GOALS OF PESSIMISM:
Pessimism is often accompanied by the idea that low expectations are more often met, and that by predicting failure you’re less likely to be disappointed. However, upon closer examination, this tactic often doesn’t achieve its goal. If you’re espousing pessimism in order to avoid feeling bad, are you really in touch with how you feel? Do you actually never feel hurt or disappointment? The answer is probably no. The negativity and anxiety of pessimism is probably making it harder to handle feelings of disappointment and hurt. Instead of being able to bounce back to the next hopeful opportunity, pessimists must pile one bad feeling onto the anticipation of the next, with no reprieve in sight. You are more resilient than you think, and hope is a better reinforcement than despair.
6. USE A MODEL OF POSITIVITY:
Regardless of whether you have an upbeat friend you can spend more time with, you’ve certainly known someone who has a positive worldview. Think about that person, whether they’re a co-worker or a favorite character from a TV show, and imagine how they would respond in a particular situation. Then try that perspective out yourself. It might feel like a bad fit at first, but with practice you’ll find out how to make it your own.
7. IDENTIFY THE POSITIVE:
The strategies above can be employed to accomplish this practice successfully. Find the positive aspect in every situation. Even the most devastating loss contains within it the opening of a new possibility or a change that could lead to positive growth. It may seem perverse at first to find the proverbial silver lining, but every culture contains ancient wisdom about exactly this practice. Finding the positive helps us move forward, and to build strong inner lives that benefit not just ourselves but our family, friends, and wider community.
One good way to do this is to ask yourself a few simple questions about an event that may at first seem overwhelmingly negative:
- Where is the positive or good part of this event?
- Where is the opportunity that has arisen within or as a result of this event?
- Where is the lesson that I can learn from this event?
Bear in mind that timing matters. You don’t have to arrive at a place of positive forward thinking immediately. Give yourself time to experience the feelings that are arising, and when you’ve regained some footing, start moving towards a positive goal.
8. GIVE POSITIVE FEEDBACK:
Give others positive feedback and do the same for yourself. Even if someone hasn’t done a great job, find the part of it that was successful and start with giving positive feedback about that part of their work. Focusing on the positive makes everyone feel more hopeful about improving their less successful areas, and can facilitate faster growth, and better results. The same goes when you’re evaluating yourself. This can be much harder to do than giving others positive support, but it’s just as important. When you do something well, don’t discredit that success. You might be tempted to write off your successes as “just a fluke” or “nothing special” or you might try to chalk up your good work to mere luck or the help of collaborators and colleagues. This is doing yourself a disservice. Accept positive feedback from others, and from yourself. If someone gives you a compliment and you feel the impulse to explain that you don’t really deserve credit, resist that urge, and instead just say thank you. The same goes for when you start to feel proud of yourself. Don’t crush that feeling down, even if it brings up anxiety about disappointing yourself later by failing to repeat your results. Accept your internal positive feedback and keep moving forward.
9. START YOUR DAY WITH POSITIVITY:
The way you start your day can help you set a positive tone. Often, the first thing we do in a day can color everything else that happens, so make sure you pick the color you want! This is likely different for everyone, but as long as this first activity makes you feel good, is calming and low stress, or pumps you up for the day ahead, it’s a good choice. It might be watching an inspirational video, doing a morning workout while listening to your favorite music, or having a nice cup of herbal tea in the sun before you start your day. You deserve to make that time for yourself, and the effect on your day will make it more than worthwhile.
10. PRACTICE MAKES POSITIVITY:
Shifting your disposition isn’t something you can do with the flip of a switch. It’s going to take time and practice. Don’t be discouraged just because you continue to have negative thoughts. That doesn’t make you a failure, it just makes you human. See those moments as opportunities to keep improving, and make sure to realize that in noticing them, you are already doing the work of creating change in yourself. Practicing positivity is the best way to create positivity, and it isn’t an all-or-nothing endeavor. Every little positive shift makes a difference, and your movement forward is not erased by negative thoughts or a bad day. You get to take your gains with you, no matter what, so keep collecting positivity, and attempting to shift your outlook.
POSITIVE FEELINGS AND IMPROVED BONE HEALTH:
If you’re finishing this article and wondering what this has to do with bone health, you have probably been influenced by the tunnel-vision of the Medical Establishment. Your bones are connected to the rest of your body (they support it!) and the health of the rest of your body naturally affects your bones. That’s why the Osteoporosis Reversal Program does more than just examine the skeletal system. It takes a holistic approach that considers the many intersecting ways that our lives, behaviors and health combine to result in strong flexible bones, or brittle fragile ones. While the Medical Establishment strives to create drugs that ignore the incredibly complex synergy of our biological systems, the Osteoporosis Reversal Program uses every scientific tool to support and nourish bones. Those tools include everything from the water you drink to the food you eat, and the way you exercise to your attitude: the neurochemical and physical impact of your disposition.
BY: Judith Graham, WebMD
REFERENCES:
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2 Mikko T. Pänkäläinen,corresponding author Tuomas V. Kerola, and Jukka J. Hintikka. “Pessimism and the risk for coronary heart disease among middle-aged and older Finnish men and women: a ten-year follow-up study” BMC Cardiovasc Disord. 2015; 15: 113. Web: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4592564/
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6 Jobin J, Wrosch C, Scheier MF. “Associations between dispositional optimism and diurnal cortisol in a community sample: when stress is perceived as higher than normal.” Health Psychol. 2014 Apr;33(4):382-91. Web: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23668853
7 Roy B, Diez-Roux AV, Seeman T, Ranjit N, Shea S, Cushman M. “Association of optimism and pessimism with inflammation and hemostasis in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA).” Psychosom Med. 2010 Feb;72(2):134-40. Web: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20100888
