Happy  people are more  healthy- the truth or  just a slogan?

The twenty first century was announced by many thinkers as the mind age. It is a fact that at the turn of centuries human emotional, mental and spiritual needs were perceived more attentively. Bustling people of the turn of centuries are tired, they feel more and more lonely, lost, threatened and despite an enormous medical progress – ill. More and more often  we loose sense on joy, happiness and satisfaction from our success. We discover more frequently that we need a loved one, good family, friends, national traditions, nature.

Health according to WHO definition is a physical as well as social and mental well being. It means that we should take care of our emotions in the same way as we care about our work or physical health – we should create positive moods.

In the book „On happiness” by Władysław Tatarkiewicz I wasn’t able to find an unambiguous definition of happiness. One of them says that happiness is a positive emotional state, or a set of conditions creating such emotional state. Happiness according to Tatarkiewicz is not a permanent state of mind, these are everyday events which we perceive as happy. The more happy moments we have the more our feeling of happiness grows. Happy moments need to be collected as beads for our necklace.

Research conducted a few years ago and described in Dean Ornish’es book “Love and survival” irrefutably confirm that people who have good relationship with their environment live healthier and even longer. People who get on well with their family are more healthy. It is important that we could take care of our family, children, friends, to be able to find time, attention and kindliness for them- none of these relationship can survive without them. There are proofs that it can be learned.

But not only family and the loved ones guarantee happiness. Let’s take care of our interests, let’s do what we like, what we are interested in, passionate about, practice sports. Let’s travel and admire the beauty of nature. The nature regenerates our vital strength in an incredible way. Let’s be passionate for art: cinema, theatre, literature, music. It is said that people feel most happy when then laugh, sing  and/or dance together. So maybe in the forthcoming carnival – let’s dance into the morning.

In the XX century we learn to take care of our heart, check cholesterol, control blood pressure. In the XXI we should learn how to take care of our good mood – happiness. Let’s start right away because happiness just as cholesterol level needs to be sought.

dr Elżbieta Dudzińska-Feliksbrot