10 Surefire Ways to Be Happier

We’re not using a lot of smiley faces on Twitter these days. That’s the finding of a team of scientists from The University of Vermont who developed a graph that illustrates a gradual downward swing in mood over the past three years. To create it, they assessed more than 46 billion words in tweets by 63 million Twitter users around the world.

The graph itself looks something like a frown.

The researchers don’t speculate why Twitter users aren’t happier. They saw clear drops in happy words during swine flu epidemics, the tsunami in Japan, the U.S. economic bailout, and even the deaths of actor Patrick Swayze and, surprisingly, Osama Bin Laden. They found that Tweeters, who tend to be young, are happiest on the weekend, with Monday and Tuesday being the most down days. And, if tweets are to be trusted, people really love Christmas. In fact, it’s the happiest day of the year.

But the researchers weren’t really trying to determine why people were or weren’t happy. Their motive: “In measuring happiness, we construct a tunable, real-time, remote-sensing and noninvasive text-based hedonometer.” In other words, a happiness sensor that policymakers could use to assess the mood of the country, or that a sales rep could access to determine the happiness quotient of the city where he’s headed for business.

These days, happiness -- which is one focus of the positive psychology movement -- is such a popular scientific subject that it has its own journal: the Journal of Happiness Studies.


I asked Caroline Miller, a life coach from Virginia who received her master’s in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania (where positive psychology was born), how happiness wound up under the microscope.

“The emerging science of positive psychology is growing precisely because people want to know what is behind authentic emotional flourishing,” says Miller, who is also the co-author of Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide.

Yet, despite our search for it, many of us find happiness to be elusive. That, in part, is because we’re looking in all the wrong places, says Miller.

“Too often, we’ve gotten caught up in thinking that getting that next thing or raise will be our ticket to well-being, and we’ve been disappointed,” she says. “Research shows that college students think fame and money will bring them happiness, but research from the positive psychology world proves otherwise. Making a bucket list and tackling it, investing in friendships and experiences, and living without regrets have been found to be some of the things that, in hindsight, have made life richer and more fulfilling.”

For some wise advice on how to be happy, Miller pointed me toward the Legacy Project. This six-year study conducted by Dr. Karl Pillemer, professor of gerontology in medicine at the Weill Cornell Medical College, is based on interviews with more than 1,200 people older than 70 (he calls them “the wisest Americans”) in which he asked them all one question: “Over the course of your life, what are the most important lessons you would like to pass on to younger people?”

Listen up, tweeters, this won’t fit into 140 characters. Here’s what your elders say about upping your happiness quotient:

1.    Pick a career based on your passion for the work, not the size of the paycheck.
2.    Practice good health habits. You’re going to be in that body for a long time; make it last.
3.    When opportunity knocks, answer with a resounding “Yes.” Take a risk, even a leap of faith.
4.    Get to know someone well before you marry him or her.
5.    Travel more. Most people consider travel adventures to be the high points of their lives.
6.    Express yourself now. Tell the people you love that you love them. Settle arguments and mend grudges right away. You never know how much time you have.
7.    Live by the mantra, “Life is short,” because even if you live to be 100, you’re going to think it is.
8.    Choose to be happy. Recognize that it is a choice.
9.    Stop worrying. Most of the things you’re worried about won’t happen.
10.  Enjoy simple pleasures. Take time to smell and drink the coffee, listen to the birds and find the beauty in the world around you.
You can listen to your elders a little more by reading Pillemer’s book, 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans.

By Denise Foley for Completely You

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For more great health & lifestyle content, visit the parent site of my blog, Completely You
Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Do You Have a Fatty Liver?

By Denise Foley for Completely You


They’re never going to make a “disease du jour” TV movie about NASH. The name alone (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, aka complicated fatty liver disease) is unappetizing. But it’s a very serious condition -- and an increasingly common one -- even if you are not a heavy drinker. If they ever do make a movie about it, it’s gonna be scary -- Stephen King-style.

As many as 5 percent of Americans have NASH and another 20 percent have fat in their liver. Both those numbers are going up, possibly as a side effect of the parallel epidemic of obesity, though the condition remains as much of a mystery as black holes and Paris Hilton’s popularity.

Here’s what we do know: NASH is similar to the kind of liver disease caused by too much alcohol. It’s marked by fat in the liver and inflammation that can lead to liver scarring, cirrhosis, cancer, and liver failure. A study published this year called liver cancer resulting from NASH “an emerging menace.” In addition, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle report that frequency of liver transplants in people with NASH has increased six-fold over the last 15 years.

You’re more likely to develop this condition if you’re overweight, obese, and middle-aged, though children are diagnosed with it too. You’re also at risk if you have high levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol and triglycerides, carry your weight around your middle, or are diabetic or prediabetic, a clue that the insulin your body is producing isn’t working efficiently to ferry blood sugar into the cells that need it for fuel. About 70 percent of people with Type 2 diabetes have a fatty liver, though not necessarily NASH.

There are two major problems with NASH. First, in early stages it has no symptoms. You can be walking around with it for decades and not know until weakness, weight loss and fatigue raise the red flag. Second, doctors have a hard time treating it. Scientists are now looking at using antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, to tamp down the free radical damage that may be causing some of the liver injury. They’ve also had some success with diabetes drugs.

Your best bet: Lose the flab. That’s the advice of Naga Chalasani, director of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Indiana University School of Medicine. There is some evidence that weight loss improves liver tests in people with NASH, and may even reverse the disease. In one study done at Brown University, people with NASH who lost more than 9 percent of their body weight via diet, exercise and behavior modification improved their condition significantly.

“You can help reduce the amount of fat in your liver by losing 5 percent of your body weight,” says Chalasani. “But you have to lose about 10 percent to reverse cell injury and fibrosis.”

If you don’t have NASH, losing weight will likely help you prevent it. As Chalasani says, “Maintaining your optimal body weight with exercise and healthy eating makes your risk of diabetes go down, and with it a lot of other things, like NASH.”

Worried about NASH? Talk about it below or tweet me @Completely_You
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Denise Foley   is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Are Your Knees Your Achilles’ Heel?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

At some point, if you’re a woman, your knees are going to bring you to your knees.

Women’s knees are our Achilles heel, more likely to be injured, worn out and replaced than men’s knees. And it’s something that even young women need to be concerned about.

A new Oxford University study published in Arthritis & Rheumatism found that nearly two-thirds of women age 50 and older experience knee pain at least once, intermittently, or all the time, and that the risk of having achy knees grows as women get older. Read a synopsis here.

In fact, just being a woman predisposes you to knee problems. We have a wider pelvis than guys to accommodate pregnancy and childbirth. That means our thigh bones connect to our knees at an inward angle that makes the knee more prone to injury. Then there’s our narrow anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). That’s a band of fibrous connective tissue that passes through the notch at the lower end of the thighbone that forms the upper part of the knee. It’s about 20 percent narrower in women. The result: Greater risk of tears.

And to add injury to injury, a woman’s hamstring muscles -- the ones at the back of the thigh -- are weak in comparison to the quadriceps, the muscles in front of the thigh. That imbalance gives your hamstrings more pull toward the back and your quadriceps less pull toward the front. I don’t think I have to tell you why that’s a bad thing. Ouch!

Finally, the risk of knee pain grows as women grow bigger. No surprise here: Weighing more and having a higher body mass index (BMI) is linked to increased risk of pain, particularly arthritic pain, in weight-bearing and often overworked joints -- not just in the knees but all over the body.

So What Do Women’s Knees Want?

• A little less weight to carry. Be smart about it. Combine a good lifetime diet program (e.g., Weight Watchers) with workouts designed by a pro to help you burn calories and build up your muscles (which will help you burn even more). “It seems that as long as there is no actual trauma to the knee, moderate exercise has a beneficial effect on pain and disability,” says Anuskha Soni, one of the Oxford researchers.
• Stronger leg muscles. Work on hamstrings and quads equally to reduce the imbalance. One easy hamstring exercise is the curl. See how to do it here. Start without weights, and then add small leg-weights, increasing the weight as the exercises become easy to do. If you’re new to exercise or have knee pain now, talk to your doctor first. You may want to try water aerobics classes where you can work on full-body fitness with the cushion of water to reduce the pressure on your joints.

Like this post? Comment below or connect with us @Completely_You
For more great health and lifestyle content, visit the parent site of my blog, Completely You

Denise Foley
  is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.

Outwalk the Grim Reaper

By Denise Foley for Completely You

We’re all in a race against the Grim Reaper, the personification of death, with his skeletal face, black cowl and ominous scythe. How fast do you have to move to outrun him?

Believe it or not, a group of scientists in Sydney, Australia, decided to find out. Actually, what they were looking for was the speed at which you have to walk in order to live longer. But they published their study in the Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal, where all sorts of whimsy is tolerated once a year, so they framed their scientific investigation in terms of timing old Mr. Death so the rest of us know how to outpace him.

Their conclusion: “The Grim Reaper’s preferred walking speed is 2 miles per hour under working conditions.” They established this with a group of 1,750 men aged 70 or older. “As none of the men in the study with walking speeds of 3 miles per hour or greater had contact with Death, this seems to be the Grim Reaper’s most likely maximum speed,” the researchers wrote. “For those wishing to avoid their allotted fate, this would be the advised walking speed.” Read the study here.

All humor aside (though that’s never a good idea, I think), the study raises an important question: If you can’t motor along at a minimum of 3 mph in your walking shoes, are you in trouble? The researchers think you might be and that you should talk to your doctor about what’s slowing you down. It could be anything from joint pain to heart trouble, and your doc may be able to offer you help to pick up your pace. It may also be a clue that there’s something going on that needs medical attention.

Walking 3 mph is considered moderate-intensity exercise, equivalent to doubles tennis, ballroom dancing, gardening, biking less than 10 mph and water aerobics. You know you’re exercising moderately if you can talk, but not sing, while moving.

If you’re an older adult like the men in this study, and generally fit, you should be exercising at this pace at least two-and-a-half hours a week, interspersing aerobic exercise with muscle-building activities two days a week. Though it sounds like a lot of time, it’s about the time you might spend watching a long movie, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Grim Reaper catches up with all of us eventually. Give him a run (or brisk walk) for his money.
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Denise Foley  
is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.