Joy and Wellness

Fitness is usually treated in realms of physicality, meaning that people would treat the diet, exercises and supplement, but not care about their mental health and how it contributes to the general wellness of a person. Joy, happiness and positivity do have a great role in a person’s physical health, you might have noticed how most healthy people are generally happy, and those who are not as healthy or not on the path to being healthy seem to be depressed. This isn’t only because of the perception of one’s self regarding their image, it’s is also because of real physical change in one’s body.

Joy can be anything, from feeling pride to taking things less serious, it can chill you out and you will naturally feel an inclination to be more relaxed. There are many studies that link between joy and happiness, many link the joy effect to the neurological nature of the body “Psychological factors play an important role in the development and progression of cardiac disease.” (Dubois et al 2012). One of the factors that link between joy and wellness is also the dopamine effect, the hormone is not only responsible for that one spike of happy feelings, it’s also responsible for a degree of health improvement.

“Optimism has been linked to healthier baseline diet and superior dietary adherence”, feeling healthy actually has a great effect on how a person reacts to food, one might think that the happier they are, the more likely to eat unhealthy foods, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth, it’s quite the opposite, the tendency is for less happy people to eat unhealthy foods, and happier people tend to stick to fruits, vegetables, and lean foods. “In summary, positive attributes are associated with improved cardiac outcomes, and this connection is likely mediated by both behavioural and physiologic factors. Positive psychology and related interventions may represent a means by which positive states and strengths of character can be cultivated in patients with—or at risk for—cardiac disease, though these interventions have not been well studied in cardiac patients in clinical care settings. Though this line of work has great potential, the field must be cautious about these interventions and their effects. Some studies linking positive attributes to medical or behavioural outcomes have been cross-sectional, preventing assessment of causality.”

A huge aspect of general health is the everyday life, having an approach on life that recognizes the rather gray or dark side, and embraces the positive side is very important, laughter itself is a great idea to improve the mood, thus improve the cardiac health, which means it won’t be such a bad idea to look at jokes that will make you laugh. Laughter and joy have always been linked to a healthy long life, and laughing more actually in a way helps you live longer.

On the topic of everyday lifestyle, it’s also important to keep people that will tell jokes that will make you laugh, so it’s very important to have a social life that is full of positive people. Having a positive mindset after all is quite hard, it would be the easy way out to see life from the raining window that to see it from the bright side, so keeping people around that are joyful and happy is critical for overall health.

Stress is one of the variants that are looked at when diagnosing an unhealthy lifestyle, stress increases anxiety and depression, which in turn have a massive after effect on your health psychologically and physically. Laughter on the other hand is one of the best ways to turn that around. How many times have you been anxious or in a bad mood, and simply by being around positive people made your day a thousand times better in a matter of few seconds.

List of references:

DuBois, C. M., Beach, S. R., Kashdan, T. B., Nyer, M. B., Park, E. R., Celano, C. M., & Huffman, J. C. (2012). Positive Psychological Attributes and Cardiac Outcomes: Associations, Mechanisms, and Interventions. Psychosomatics, 53(4), 303–318. doi:10.1016/j.psym.2012.04.004