Good Health Leads To a Happy Life

A positive outlook and BMI both contributed significantly to good health. Wellness programmes and centres should be designed that dynamically integrate body, mind and spirit into a seamless unit.

College students generally suffer high rates of anxiety and depression and often neglect physical self-care and exercise. Optimists and happy people are healthier overall, enjoying lower blood pressure and less depression and anxiety, among other measures, suggests new research on college students.

The findings, published in the Biomedical Journal of Scientific and Technical Research, suggest that universities should creatively design wellness programmes and centres that dynamically integrate body, mind and spirit into a seamless unit.

Skin may Regulate Blood Pressure in the Stressful Environment
The skin may play a role in regulating blood pressure and heart rate, the discovery was made by the University of Cambridge and the Karolinska Institute scientists.

‘Optimists and happy people are healthier overall, enjoying lower blood pressure and less depression and anxiety, among other measures.’

To researchers from the University of Michigan and Fudan University in China set out to learn the extent to which body mass index (BMI) and positive outlook affect the physical and mental health of college students in China's Fudan University.

The study showed that a positive outlook and BMI both contributed significantly to good health, said Weiyun Chen, Associate Professor at University of Michigan.

The researchers asked 925 students to rate four indicators of psychological well-being -- hope, gratitude, life satisfaction and subjective happiness.

Community Interventions Improve Blood Pressure Control
Multicomponent intervention programs in the community can help low income patient's control their uncontrolled high blood pressure levels.

They also calculated students' BMI based on self-reported body weight and height.

To assess physical and mental health, the researchers asked students various questions about their sleep quality and how often they felt healthy, energised, worthless, fidgety, anxious or depressed.

High Blood Pressure can Lead to Organ Damage Among Teens
High BP in youth is defined differently than it is in adults. In childhood, high blood pressure is based on percentiles, rather than blood pressure level.

Taken together, the four psychological variables and BMI accounted for 41 percent of the total variance in health, Chen said.

Individually, subjective happiness had the most significant impact, followed by hope, and then BMI, the study showed.

Systolic Blood Pressure is a Useful Predictor for Patients Experiencing STEMI
STEMI is one type of myocardial infarction in which a part the heart muscle (myocardium) has died due to the obstruction of blood supply to the area.

Source-IANS