(NBC) A new study of British women is good news for grumpy people. Researchers in Britain found that being happy apparently has no effect on how long you might live.
Previous studies have linked happiness to longevity, but researchers now say that is not true.
So, while being sick makes you unhappy, just being grouchy is not enough to make you ill or shorten your life.
The results are based on questionnaires from more than 715,000 British women ages 50 to 69, who were followed for about a decade.
Scientists found the death rate among unhappy women was the same as those who were happy.
"I suppose what we have is good news for the grumpy, or for the worried-well, actually that being unhappy, being stressed doesn't, of itself, cause illness," said study co-author Sir Richard Peto. "We asked a million women what they smoked, what illnesses they've had and particularly whether they were happy, whether they were stressed and we found that although illness causes unhappiness, illness causes stress, unhappiness and stress don't themselves directly cause illness."
The research was published online Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet.
Courtesy: NBC News Channel