Women show optimism, trust are keys to long, healthy lives

William Atkins
Monday, 09 March 2009 18:14

Science - Health

A U.S. research team studied the rates of death and incidences of chronic diseases in a large number of women, and compared them with whether the women were optimistic or pessimistic, and either trusting or distrusting. So, do you see yourself mostly happy or sad, and do you trust or distrusts people?


The paper "Psychological Traits and Total Mortality in the Women's Health Initiative” was presented by Dr. Hilary Tindle in Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A., on Thursday, March 5, 2009 at the 67th annual Scientific Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society.

The meeting was entitled a “Psychosomatic Research and Care Across the Life Course," which was held at the Marriott Downtown from March 4 to 7, 2009.

Its authors are Hilary Tindle, Yue-Fan Chang, Lewis H. Kuller, Greg J. Siegle, Karen Matthews, Milagros C. Rosal, Jennifer G. Robinson, and JoAnn E. Manson.

Dr. Hilary Tindle, an assistant professor of medicine within the Division of Internal Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Pennsylvania), led the study that used 100,000 post-menopausal women (who were fifty to seventy-four years of age), who did not have heart disease or cancer at the beginning of the study.

The scientists provided questionnaires to the women in order to decide whether the women were optimistic or pessimistic, and whether they were generally trusting of other people or distrusting (as they say, "cynically hostile") of others.

Dr. Tindle was quoted, within the Reuters article Optimists live longer and healthier lives: study, to have said, “Women in the cynically hostile group tended to agree with questions such as: ‘I've often had to take orders from someone who didn't know as much as I did’ or ‘It's safest to trust nobody,’ Tindle said in a telephone interview.”

She added, "These questions prove a general mistrust of people.”

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