How you look at the world affects your physical and emotional health. It’s not always easy but here’s why you may want to turn more lemons into lemonade.

Take a Look at the Bright Side

Optimism may decrease your risk for heart disease.

Diagnosis Life summary:
Stress and heart disease go hand in hand. Now researchers go so far as to say being optimistic helps you live longer. A meta-analysis of 15 studies in JAMA Network Open (https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.12200) followed nearly 230,000 adults over an average of 14 years. The study was targeted to look at optimism and heart disease, specifically angina, heart attacks, and stroke. People who had cancer were not considered in the final analysis, since this could have skewed the results. Optimism decreased cardiac events like heart attacks and stroke by 35% and all-cause mortality by 14%. Do what you can to find the positive in life.

Seeing the glass as half full may promote better sleep quality.

Diagnosis Life summary:
As many as 1 in 3 people suffers from insomnia on a regular basis. A study in Behavioral Medicine (https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2019.1575179) found that a positive mindset may help. Researchers looked at the sleep quality of more than 3,500 people between 32 and 51 years old. They also assessed each participant’s optimism using the revised Life-Orientation Test and rechecked their scores over 5 years. The higher someone scored for optimism, the better their sleep quality. In fact, for each increase in score (by 1 standard deviation), someone was 78% more likely to report “very good” sleep quality. People who had the highest optimism scores were more likely to get reasonable amounts of sleep, ranging from 6 to 9 hours per night. Are you someone who sees the glass half empty or half full? It may be time to look at the world in a whole new way.

You may have a genetic predisposition to being a morning person.

Diagnosis Life summary:
Not everyone is a morning person.  You can blame circadian rhythms  and how your genes influence them. A study in Nature Communications (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-08259-7) looked at data from nearly 700,000 people and found 351 different alleles (versions of a gene) that influence your preference for mornings or evenings. It turns out this may have repercussions for your wellbeing. The researchers report “being a morning person is causally associated with better mental health but does not affect BMI or risk of Type 2 diabetes.” We may not be able to control our genes but we can control our lifestyles. Be sure to get enough sleep, eat well, and exercise regularly to give yourself a mental boost.