Contrary to previous beliefs, recent studies revealed that being sad or stressed could not kill you. As per BBC News a study that was done by UK's Million Study revealed that unhappiness does not increase an individual's chances of dying.
Contrary to this statement however, previous researches have emerged that being "unhappy" was hazardous to one's health, most especially with the cardio vascular system. A series that was published in Lancet however pointed out that previous studies in regards to this matter were just misinterpreted as they were confused by the cause and effect factor.
Though it may be just a little confusion, several experts on the other hand stated that an unhappy childhood can have a lasting impact on the individual's health. Numerous studies revealed how people who lived happy lives positively predict that they are going to live longer. In addition to the study's scope, it was also taken into consideration that stress hormones or the immune system can be affected by stress which can result into higher death risk.
As per the website, Participants who joined the Million Women Study were monitored via their health, happiness, and stress levels.
As for the conclusion, it was revealed that ''whether people were 'never', 'usually' or 'mostly' happy had no impact on their odds of dying during the duration of the study once other factors such as health or whether they smoked were taken into account."
One of the researchers from the University of South Wales in Australia, Dr Bette Liu stated that: "Illness makes you unhappy, but unhappiness itself doesn't make you ill. We found no direct effect of unhappiness or stress on mortality, even in a 10-year study of a million women."
While the co-author of the study Prof Richard Peto from the University of Oxford stated that "light smokers had double the risk of an early death and regular smokers had three times the risk of dying during the study period, but that happiness was 'irrelevant'.''
