Make happiness a habit

Make happiness a habit

For your heart’s sake, make happiness a habit.

They don’t call it a hearty laugh without reason. Substituting a fang-baring, expletive-spewing expression with a pleasant smile does a lot of good to your heart, says a recent research.

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston reported that positive moods and attitudes protected people, especially the elderly, against heart disease. Even incremental increases in happiness helped: For every step up on the researchers’ happiness scale, male participants’ stroke risk dropped 41 per cent and women’s risk dropped 18 per cent.

“It’s old hat that emotions do affect the heart,” says cardiologist Manoj Agarwal and adds that heart-related problems are “common in people who are prone to depression and are impatient, get angry easily, have difficulty expressing emotions, are too competitive, perfectionists and those who place an unhealthy dependence on external rewards such as wealth, status, or power.”

Also rage seems to be the new age disease — attitude sporting, multi-tasking Gen Y is clearly flirting with heart disease as psychologist Sujatha Raman points out that “with the emergence of MNCs there’s been a rise in referrals from cardiologists for anger management for the city’s young work force.”

Provoked
All of us are familiar with the pounding of the heart, when one’s angry. Rage results in hormonal secretions that cause a rise in the heart rate and can cause “a spasm in the arteries in normal people. Imagine the effect that it has on people already with a block in their arteries,” says Agarwal. Anger is an impulsive reaction over which the perpetuator has little control, but today there are techniques that help people deal with their outbursts.

Raman talks of a fun game where the patient is provoked to elicit an angry response and he wins points at every instance he does not succumb to the provocation. “We also ask patients to list anger-provoking incidents in the month, ask them to identify the trigger factor and give them a back-up plan on how to deal with a similar situation when it arises,” she explains.

Psychiatrist Dr Prabhakar Korada suggests deep-breathing techniques to avert a rage attack — “When we get angry our heart rate increases and a patient is taught to divert attention to the heartbeat and reduce it consciously with the help of breathing techniques.”

Even faking helps
Getting out of the vice-hold of anger and irritability is of course the first step and the second step is to “make happiness a habit,” says Korada, adding that “even faking it has its benefits as the prolonged practice is habit forming and you start eliciting positive vibes from people”. Though not many take kindly to the benefit of laughter groups, terming it as forced laughter, Korada says that “social grouping and sharing at these clubs reduces stress and laughter has its benefits — it’s infectious, has all the benefits of pranayama, is a good workout for the chest muscles and increases the venous and lymphatic circulation in the body.” Yoga therapist Rita Khanna reveals that laughter yoga is about “self-triggered laughter and is a powerful antidote to stress, pain and conflict”.

Get hitched
A Tel Aviv University study done on more than 10,000 Israeli men found that those who were married at midlife were 64 per cent less likely to die of a stroke during the next 34 years than single men. Agarwal agrees that “happy family relations with spouse and kids go a long way in de-stressing a person and shielding them from stress-related heart diseases.” Raman points out that “partners who have occasional squabbles are better off heart-wise that a single person.”

Don’t worry, be happy
The ‘no worries’ motto of Timon and Pumba in The Lion King is something Korada advises. “Learn to laugh at yourself when you make a mistake instead of whipping yourself emotionally. Humour is good for you, it reduces stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline like-substances and increases endorphins in the bloodstream which are responsible for the feel-good experience.” So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to laugh your heart out.

Follow us on Twitter for more stories.