Happiness is health and vice versa

From Dr. Weil:

Happiness is Healthy
That sounds like a no-brainer, but a new British study has found that the more upbeat your mood, the lower the levels of an unhealthy stress hormone. What’s more, it showed that the happy women participating in the study had lower internal markers of the persistent inflammation that can lead to heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases. While happy people do tend to be healthier than those who are pessimistic and stressed out, the notion that they take better care of themselves isn’t necessarily true. Saliva tests showed that happy study participants had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which contributes to high blood pressure, abdominal obesity and less than optimal immune function. Nearly 2,900 healthy adults, age 50 to 74, participated by recording their moods at the time of the tests. On another day, the researchers measured two markers for inflammation, C-reactive protein and interleukin 6. Among women (but not men) positive emotions correlated with healthier, lower levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin 6. The study was published in the Jan. 1, 2008 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.