Happiness and Health (E63)

Happiness for Cynics Podcast

This week, Marie and Pete talk about how happiness leads to better health, but does being healthier make you happier?

Transcript

[Happy intro music -background]

M: Welcome to happiness for cynics and thanks for joining us as we explore all the things I wish I’d known earlier in life but didn’t.

P: This podcast is about how to live the good life. Whether we’re talking about a new study or the latest news or eastern philosophy, our show is all about discovering what makes people happy.

M: So, if you’re like me and you want more out of life, listen in and more importantly, buy in because I guarantee if you do, the science of happiness can change your life.

P: Plus, sometimes I think we’re kind of funny.

[Intro music fadeout]

M: We’re on.

P: Hello.

M: Hello, welcome back.

…

P: Oh!

M: That’s you, you’re up, laugh!

P: I thought it was you!

M & P: Laughter!

P: Welcome back to this week’s episode of Happiness for Cynics.

M: Yes, we are talking about happiness literacy, this week.

P: Ooh, I like this word.

M: And it’s tied to other types of literacy.

P: Mmm.

M: And so we’re going to talk about other types of literacy that society today says we should have.

P: Yes, and having the understanding of how to use that literacy and how to use it for the best outcome –

M: Absolutely.

P: – later on in life and how it sets you up for later in life.

M: Absolutely. And so, we are going to focus in a little bit on health and happiness and health literacy and how that ties to happiness literacy.

P: Yep.

M: And we know we’ve discussed many, many times, all the research that shows that being healthier makes you happier.

P: Definitely.

M: But the question we’re looking to answer today is does being happier make you healthier?

P: I like the twist on this, laugh.

M: Yes, does it go the other way? And when we first, I think in episode one we talked about what makes people happy. We talked about negative affect.

P: Mmm.

M: So all the crap that goes wrong in your life. Positive affect, all the good stuff that happens and how they give you momentary bumps and troughs in your happiness level. And then there’s pretty much mindset, let’s be honest.

P: Yeah.

M: It’s what else you do that is within your control, that impacts your happiness.

P: Mmm.

M: And that’s things like practising gratitude, having good and strong social connections, having purpose and meaning in your life and having healthy mind and body habits.

P: Mmm

M: So, health is a major foundation for happiness benefits.

P: And for happiness itself, from some of the stuff that I’ve been reading. So we might mention those further down the track.

M: Yep, absolutely. So really, what we’re talking about here is how much does your health impact your happiness and your well-being, your satisfaction with life?

P: Well, hugely, I think. I think that if, because if illness and disease is around, it’s very difficult to be positive. Let’s face it, when you’re sick, you just want to crawl into bed and hug a pillow and have a warm cup of tea.

M: Yep.

P: It doesn’t allow you to be thinking proactively and to be positive in your outlook in terms of life goals and achievement. If you’re worrying, we know that if you’re worried about stress and putting food on the table, then the idea of spending two hours working on your happiness levels just doesn’t come into it.

M: I think also there’s a certain point where you go back to living a life of decreased health and you find ways to find happiness so temporary or even permanent disability.

P: Mmm.

M: You move on, you find a way and it might not be at a level that was the same as before, pre-accident or pre-illness etcetera. But we’re very resilient as far as animals go. Humans are very resilient people, and there’s almost a rebound after a major trauma or illness where you can often times end up happier than you were before.

P: So, it’s a conduit to a greater level of happiness.

M: Yes, so you might have decreased health. But you are so much more grateful for everything you do have and that translates into being happier.

P: Mmm, and possibly the lever as well, like it makes you more grateful because

M: Absolutely.

P: you’re walking the street again, in the sunshine, makes you go ‘Yeah! I couldn’t do this two years ago.’

M: Yeah, and it’s called post traumatic growth.

P: Oh.

M: So, there’s a whole field of study around this, definitely. So health and poor health can actually lead to better happiness levels but day to day, I think you’re absolutely right. And then there’s, then there’s that step further, people with chronic pain in particular.

P: Mmm, mmm.

M: It is really hard to be happy when you’re just trying day in, day out to fight, to not let the pain sink you.

P: Absolutely, that is a real negative cycle that keeps so many people in a downward spiral.

M: Yeah, and in depression.

P: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a huge issue, chronic pain and where we’re seeing more chronic pain coming through in health data at the moment, we’re getting better at diagnosing chronic pain. We’re also recognising it more a lot and bless my mum she’s like ‘We didn’t have any of this crap when I was around.’ And I’m like ‘No mum, we didn’t know what it was. We had no, no way of diagnosing it.’

M: Yep.

P: The terms weren’t there and we’re getting better at identifying issues now. That maybe aren’t, we don’t know exactly the causes, but we’re still willing to look at them. And even in the health education that is out there, people are being encouraged to look at social factors and mental factors rather than just looking at the biological model of health, which looks directly at “Are you sick?”

M: I think the other great thing that’s happened in the last 10 years or so, and a lot of people are still cynics, –

P: Laugh!

M: Gotta throw that word in.

P: Gotta put that out there, laugh.

M: Yep, it is the point of the show.

– is that we’re actually giving credibility to the Eastern way of thinking, which is tying mind and body together, it is one, it is one system.

P: Mmm.

M: You cannot separate one from the other. You can’t, we are one united system and so you have to look at mind and body together and treat mind and body together.

P: Mmm.

M: And for Western science, we’ve often separated the two.

P: Well, it’s even, it even goes further back than just Eastern philosophy. If you look at ancient cultures, so the definition of indigenous health is a connection to the land, so it even takes that one step further of it’s not about you it’s about your connection with the land and with the community. So, the ancient cultures or those older, older cultures of which the Eastern culture is part of the definitely have that relationship between mind-health, body-health and all things moving forward.

M: Yep, absolutely. So, we started this out by talking about being happy literate, but we wanted to look at health literacy.

P: Health literacy, yeah.

M: And you’ve been doing a lot of study on this recently.

P: I have! I feel like I’ve got I’ve got things behind me now!

M: Laugh.

P: I have references! I did a reference list for the first time! Laugh.

M: Laugh!

P: That was interesting.

M & P: Laughter!

P: And I do have to give a shout out to one of my lovely clients who got so excited when I said I was doing a reference list. She’s an academic and at the beginning of her apartment she went “Can I have a look.”

M: Laughter!

P: And then she spent 20 minutes fixing my references, laugh. So lovely Jill, thank you so much, you gave me a reference list education in our appointment, laugh.

But yes, health literacy really, really important. How to understand health and understanding the health system so that you can use it for your own benefit.

M: So that you can get the best health outcomes.

P: Definitely. And this all comes at the beginning stages of your life. If you can understand things when you’re 20 and be putting things in place. So, putting practises into place taking part in healthy behaviours this sets up good social conditioning which lasts you into your eighties and nineties and beyond.

M: And I think the reason why this is new and why your mom is like, ‘we didn’t have this stuff before!’

P: Laugh.

M: Because, sorry mum, people used to just die.

P: It’s true.

M: Yep.

P: Yep.

M: We didn’t treat this stuff. Cancer was a death sentence.

P: People were dying earlier, we weren’t able to treat chronic illness early.

M: Yep.

P: And it was, it had a huge effect.

M: Chronic or acute. We couldn’t [treat it] before, it was it was a death sentence. So that’s firstly and secondly, the sheer volume of data that is produced on a, I was going to say daily, but hourly basis in our world is astronomical, absolutely astronomical. There’s a great start that I love to point to. So the average person in their lifetime a hundred years ago used to read as much information as is in one issue of The New York Times.

P: Ok.

M: And if you think about it, so [just] one issue of The New York Times is what they would know over their lifetime.

P: Ok, wow.

M: We read one of those every day. Plus, we have Google and Facebook and work and so much information at our fingertips, and so we’re consuming so much more were not necessarily retaining it all, let’s be frank.

P: Laugh, no. Well, our short-term memory is editing a lot more now.

M: Well, it has to. There’s so much more, we’re being bombarded as humans with so much more information and the average doctor cannot, the average GP who’s your first line of defence against all of your medical issues, can’t be across the latest in every field.

P: No.

M: In every medical field. They can’t, they just physically can’t and this is why I’m really excited about AI doctors.

P: Laugh!

M: I think with your, with your physical person, you’re human touch Doctor, combined, they can do fabulous things. But health Literacy is a thing now because if you’re not health literate, you can have really poor health outcomes. But if you are health literate, you can survive well into your eighties, nineties, you know, up to 100, living an agile and healthy and happy life and contributing to society.

P: Mmm.

M: But if you get that wrong, you can not only die a lot earlier, but you could also just live a really poor quality of life from a health perspective which impacts your happiness for your last 20, 30 years.

P: They talk about this a lot with the disability care and the disability adjusted life years expectancy.

So you may be living until you’re 60. But 30 of those years I spent in care and in a nursing home because you haven’t got the ability to be able to look after yourself. And it’s a stat that they’re looking to change in terms of our managing of disability care and aged care as well.

M: Mmm hmm. Yeah, I couldn’t support it more and again, there are so many people who were so much worse off than I was. But after my motorbike accident, I was stuck at home in a wheelchair without a lot of the support because it was a temporary disability, not a permanent disability.

P: Mmm, yeah.

M: And I was isolated, completely isolated. My ability to participate in society was stripped from me completely.

P: Mmm.

M: And I…

P: And as you pointed out, we need that social interaction to maintain our happiness levels or to keep ourselves buoyant.

M: Absolutely. And you have a lot of elderly people who are just not stable on their feet or have health conditions that limits them to home.

P: It does.

M: It’s safe at home, right?

P: Especially if the models are that they’re going to move towards a home-based care, which has come out of the royal commission recently.

M: Yeah, absolutely. So, you can stay at home, but that’s a lot lonelier place to be.

P: It can be yeah. That has to be managed and supported through community networks and integrated health system, which they’re also talking about.

M: So, I think we’ve pretty much given the answer away we know that being happier makes you healthier, but being healthier does make you happier as well.

P: Definitely makes a difference.

M: So you have some studies.

P: I do, laugh.

M: Speaking of your reference list.

P: I do. Well it actually goes in terms of actually talking about location as well, that socioeconomic indicators, so those people who are more wealthy or less wealthy has an impact on our ability to be taking part in actions that contribute to our happiness and to our longevity.

So there’s a lot of work from Darwin and Drewnowski in New York who talk about the socioeconomic influences in regards to health education and access to the health system.

M: So, health education or access. I get access. If you’re poorer, you can’t get the greatest doctor because you might not have private health insurance.

P: Or you can get to a doctor because then they’re not in your area. You have to travel.

M: Yes, okay, so look, that’s, that’s to me, a no brainer, but coming back to literacy.

P: Mmm, hmm.

M: Why are poorer people not getting access to information, which is free a lot of the time, right?

P: It is, but one of the one of the factors that they pointed out here is that, for example if you take youth health literacy in our remote and rural communities, people aren’t getting to school in our rural and remote communities. The rates of year seven entry are low. In a study in 2009, year seven entry rates in rural and regional areas of Australia at 67%, 54% and 24% respectively.

M: Rural and regional?

P: Rural, regional and remote, [Year 7 entry rates for 2009]

• Rural – 67%
• Regional – 54%
• Remote – 24%

M: Ok.

P: If we look at Indigenous populations in an urban setting. So, a disadvantaged group, but in an urban setting, [Year 7 enrolment rate is] 63.1%.

P: So the access to school is lower in those geographically challenged locations. And then if we look at some of the other people that are talking about, what that does to us in terms of access to health.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: The school acts as a link to the health system because you’re getting mentored into good behaviours. You’re getting access to information, which is coming through the school system that talks about nutrition, talks about getting enough sleep, talks about giving you the information to negotiate the health system and to understand what it means when you’re going for a Pap smear or your looking after you health into your fifties and sixties.

M: I didn’t get that. We rolled condoms on bananas.

P: Laugh! But you remember that.

M: And we were told don’t smoke and don’t do drugs.

P: Yeah, yeah.

M: But I think at that point it was so, you know, adults telling you not to do it, so everyone went out and had a smoke just to see what the fuss was about, you know.

P: True, true.

M: Yeah, look, I think maybe things have evolved a little bit. We started talking about nutrition in P.E. (Physical Education) a little bit, but I hope that things have evolved because obviously, as we’re showing here, the healthy you are, the happy you are. And if it’s going to be such a negative affect, so we go back to the negative affect on positive affect.

P: Yep.

M: These are things that a lot of the time are out of your control or you know they’re situational. If you could do anything to impact the negative affect in your life, such as knowing that you should choose a salad over a burger.

P: Mmm, yep.

M: Just knowing that, then it’s going to impact your life and you’ve only got one life.

P: There’s a study about that in Deakin University.

M: Oh, listen to you!

P: Laugh!

M: Tell me, tell me about your study Pete?

P: Felice Jacka of Deakin University in Australia did a study on the therapeutic impact of a healthy diet.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: And what she found was that she took a group of people who were depressed and on psychotherapy and taking antidepressants.

Half were given nutritional counselling and then the other half were given one on one counselling. So a social connection and trying to establish which group came out better and what they found was the people who engaged in the healthy eating had a significantly happier response than the group that were having the additional companionship.

M: Mmm.

P: This comes bounding back to that social connection. We need social connections. But in this instance, what they’re saying is that the change in diet actually had a bigger impact.

M: Well, social connection with the therapist is a bit of a loose social connection.

P: Well, true…

M: I do hear what you’re saying about diet, though, and I think that’s fabulous and a great result. But if you could allow people to go socialise with their friends at the pub versus spend an hour talking about how –

P: Well, I guess we’re looking at depressed people.

M: [someone] bullied me, laugh.

P: Yeah, we’re talking about psychotherapy. We’re talking about people who are clinically depressed.

M: Yeah, a different type of social [interaction].

P: True.

M: I wouldn’t pick that one necessarily, but I think it is super interesting – don’t get me wrong – that food can have such an impact.

P: There is a second study at the University of Konstanz in Germany supports the same thing.

M: Yep.

P: It says, diet that was based on vegetables and fruit over time had a larger share of the overall happiness than the group that we’re on a high sugar diet.

M: And I think we’ve spoken out blue zones where the healthiest and longest living people live before and there’s a few things that you see across the board. So there’s Okinawa in Japan, Bar-bag…

P: Laugh.

M: Bar-bagia [Barbagia] in Sardinia, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica and Linda Loman in California. And these air all small communities where people are more likely to live to 100. So they’re small, and scientists looked at whether that meant it was just a gene thing or whether it was life choices.

P: Ok.

M: And definitely it’s come down to life choices. And there’s a few things that all these communities have in common.

They find purpose in their social connections.

So, that is definitely a strong theme through all of these small, tight knit communities.

They also live closer to nature, and they spend their time in nature.

So there’s a health benefit from surrounding themselves with nature and all the lifestyle choices that come with that.

P: Yeah.

M: So that ties closely to exercise like we’re talking about.

P: Yep.

M: Also, most people living in blue zones enjoy physical activity and incorporate that naturally into their daily lives.

P: Yes.

M: So, they do a lot more gardening and walking.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: They spend a lot more time running around after their grandchildren and volunteering.

P: Mmm.

M: They also have a slower pace of life, so a bit less stress as well, and finally back to what we’ve been talking about. Their diet is characterised by moderate caloric intake.

P: And mostly plant-based sources, I can see as well.

M: Yes. Yes so vegans rejoice.

P: Laugh!

M: So these are small communities where Maccas hasn’t moved in, right?

P: Yeah, there’s more information I’ve got on that. So, Adam Drewnowski, in a 2009 study, talks about the existence of food deserts in areas of America.

M: Yes!

P: And this is where fast food outlets actually outnumber grocery stores. And this comes back to social determinants of health and having access to that dietary area. So the location where you live, if you live in one of these food deserts, it’s much harder for you to get access to fresh fruit and veg to the point of like 200 kilometres.

M: Yep.

P: You have to travel that far to get to a grocery store.

M: Because they’ve only got a 7/11, and any time they put fresh fruit and veg in there –

P: it’s gone.

M: No, it goes off.

P: Oh!

M: They’re not selling it enough, so they don’t sell it.

P: Yep.

M: It’s a, it’s a cycle, right?

P: Mmm.

M: There’s a couple of other things that I think are fascinating when it comes to health and happiness and the other impacts. So, firstly, a lack of exercise has been shown to lead to psychological disorders as we’ve discussed, so:

• Depression;
• ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder);
• ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder);

Which is interesting for a lot of kids nowadays who are developing ADHD and ADD.

P: Yes, true. Or being diagnosed with it.

M: Yeah. Also, increasing exercise reduces your chance of dementia by 50%.

P: Yeah, that’s huge.

M: Yeah, absolutely.

P: That’s a big figure.

M: And then Ronald Petersen, who is an American doctor, he said “regular physical exercise is probably the best means we have of preventing Alzheimer’s disease today, better than medications, better than intellectual activity and better than supplements and diet.”

P: Mmm, interesting.

M: Exercise.

P: Yep, so true. And if we sort of get that 15 minutes a day that is so recommended, it does, it makes such a difference to your well-being and to your perspective.

M: Yep.

P: Getting out. Out of the house, out of the room that you’re in. I rode my bike for the first time in weeks today and I was like ‘Oh, yeah, I remember why this is good for me.’ Get’s you breathing. It gets all the systems moving through. And that has huge effects on your endocrine activity and your hormonal balances that ruled your system.

M: Absolutely. All right, Well, we have definitely shown that being happier makes you healthier. And being healthier makes you happier.

P: Laugh! Flip the switch.

M: Absolutely, thanks for joining us this week and we’ll see you next time.

P: Choose happiness.

[Happy exit music – background]

M: Thanks for joining us today if you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, where you can also send in questions or propose a topic.

P: And if you like our little show we would absolutely love for you to leave a comment or rating to help us out.

M: Until next time.

M & P: Choose happiness.

[Exit music fadeout]

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