Help your heart with positive thinking

If you are an optimistic person, you're lucky. Optimists have a powerfully beneficial effect on their own health — and are much less likely than pessimists to die of cardiovascular disease, according to a study of older people in the Netherlands.

• A study that followed the fortunes of 96 men who had had a first heart attack revealed that having an optimistic outlook also reduced the chance of a further attack.
• The researchers kept a close eye on their subjects' moods and reactions to events.
• Over the following eight years, 15 of the 16 most pessimistic men had died of another heart attack — whereas, among the most optimistic group, 11 of 16 had survived.

• Several scientific studies have found that it is perfectly possible to think yourself healthy.
• Psychologists who observed 84 female hotel workers found that, although the women were clearly getting plenty of exercise — each cleaned 15 rooms per day on average — most didn't count their work as exercise.
• Two-thirds claimed not to exercise regularly, and more than a third insisted that they got no exercise at all.
• The most amazing finding was that the workers' cardiovascular health, as measured by blood pressure, weight, body fat, BMI and waist-to-hip ratio, was related to how much exercise they thought they were getting — not how much they actually got.
• The psychologists then went a step further. They took aside half of the hotel workers and spent an hour explaining to them how the amount of exercise they got from their jobs more than met the requirements of a healthy and active lifestyle.
• They also gave out fact sheets showing how many calories are burned by various cleaning activities. The other group of workers was given no such information.
• Four weeks later, both groups were reassessed. Activity levels had not changed in either group, but those given information about the health benefits of their work now perceived themselves as doing more exercise — and they had become healthier, as well.
• They had lost weight, removed inches from their waist measurements, reduced their body fat, BMI and waist-to-hip ratios, and improved their blood pressure — simply as a result of being given the information and believing that they had a healthier lifestyle than they had formerly thought.
• The study is a compelling example of the power of positive thinking.