What is happiness? Who does not run after her? Is it so hard to find? There are questions that many have put on them over time. Some have found the answer: happiness is a cumulation of individual experiences. Last year, researchers made eight important breakthroughs about happiness, and the lifecience.com site presents them at the beginning of 2018. Here's what they are!
Children sharing things with each other are happier
For children, sharing things can bring happiness, but only if they do it voluntarily, according to a study by Chinese researchers. This study was conducted on groups of children aged between 3 and 5 who were forced to share objects - in this case stickers - or were left to choose if they wanted to share them with others or not.
Researchers have noticed, starting from the expressions that were read on the faces of the little ones, that they were happier when they were allowed to divide them voluntarily, than when each kept their stickers for themselves. If the researchers intervened to force the children to divide, the little ones were rather disappointed and upset.
This study was published in the May issue of Frontiers in Psychology.
Meditation can diminish stress markers in the body
Practicing meditation can help us with less stressful situations. In a study, people suffering from anxiety disorder and following a meditation course began to exhibit lower levels of stress hormones and inflammation markers in the body in a stressful situation compared to the stress response on who had it before being initiated into meditation. By contrast, study participants who did not meditate but underwent a stress management course did not experience similar reductions when exposed to a stressful event.
Meditation helps people focus exclusively on the present and more easily accepts thoughts and feelings that are hard to accept. The study, published on January 24 in Psychiatry Research, concluded that meditation "can be a beneficial strategy to reduce biological reactivity to stress" in people suffering from anxiety disorder.
Sport makes us feel better
Even a limited level of exercise can be helpful in fighting depression. One study has analyzed for 11 years information about 34,000 Norwegian adults who have been questioned periodically about how often they are moving, as well as about possible symptoms of depression. Researchers have noticed that subjects who declared they were not at all at the start of the study had a 44% higher risk of suffering depression compared to those who said they were doing sports for at least 1-2 hours week.
Following this study, researchers estimated that if all subjects had been doing sports for at least 1 hour a week, 12% of the group's depression cases could have been prevented. The conclusion of the study published on October 3 in the American Journal of Psychiatry is that substantial benefits can be obtained for mental health either with only a modest increase in weekly exercise.
Hawaii, the state with the happiest people
Science can not tell us how to make us happy yet, but it can tell us where we have the best chance of succeeding: in Hawaii - the US state comfortably placed first among the happiest US states, according to annual Gallup polls -Healthway. In 2016, the Hawaiians achieved a score of 65.2 out of 100 possible points in the top of happiness. The results for the 2016 study were released in February 2017 and was for the sixth time when the Hawaii State achieved the best score since the launch of these annual surveys in 2008.
The top is based on the survey of over 177,000 American adults from all 50 states. Researchers calculated a state of well-being for each state, starting from respondents' answers to various questions - including some on social relationships, the existence of a sense of purpose in life, financial conditions, community involvement, and health.
Online dating applications can affect our self-esteem
Tinder's online dating services have the declared purpose of enlivening our sex life, but the whole process can affect our mental health, according to preliminary studies.
Thus, in a recent study, researchers analyzed information from over 800 students who used the Tinder application to find their pair. The study's conclusions were that Tinder users face a higher risk than those who do not use such applications to deal with negative feelings such as pressure to show in a certain way or simply pass more frequently through negative states.
Of course, this does not mean we have to delete our Tinder account, but, as the researchers suggest, let us no longer refer to Tinder as a means of self-validation - in other words, we should not judge our own success depending on the number of recommended application partners. Users also have to keep in mind that the photos they see on such apps are often selected for a person to look as good as possible and not as they look in everyday life.
The right posture makes us feel better with us
The simple posture of the body can make us feel better, at least in the short term, according to a preliminary study conducted in New Zealand.
This study was attended by 61 people with minor symptoms to moderate depression. Approximately half of the participants received instructions on how to adopt a good position for the body (how to stand) and the researchers helped them to maintain this position by applying sports adhesive tapes on their backs. The other participants in the study received no advice on posture and were randomly assigned a few lanes on the back.
Then the study participants had to fill in a questionnaire on how they felt. The results indicated that the participants who kept their back straight declared themselves more enthusiastic, stronger and less tired than the participants who did not keep their back straight.
Sleep disturbances can lead to depression
Sleep disorders are often seen as signs of mental illness, such as depression and anxiety. A recent study suggests that, in fact, lack of sleep contributes to the emergence of such psychiatric problems. Over 3,700 British students with insomnia attended the study. Participants responded to questions about their sleep and possible symptoms of anxiety or depression in two stages: once at the beginning of the study and then after 10 weeks, when they received treatment against insomnia (behavioral-cognitive therapy).
The researchers came to the conclusion that students who received behavioral-cognitive treatment against insomnia had lower levels of depression and anxiety and had a better opinion about them than those who did not receive this treatment.
"In many people, insomnia may be part of a complex of causes for certain mental disorders," according to a study published on September 6 in The Lancet Psychiatry. The study suggests that doctors treating depression and anxiety should pay more attention to treating patients' sleep problems.
Too much Facebook can affect our mental health
Many people, more jokingly, more seriously, complain that they spend too much time on Facebook, and a recent study shows that intensive use of online social media can affect our physical and mental health. The study, conducted by analyzing Facebook accounts of more than 5,200 people, concluded that, in general, the more active we are on Facebook, the more affected our health. For example, subjects who reported that they like to "like" a lot of things on Facebook, or who change their status on the social network more frequently, have a worse mental health than those who give less likes on Facebok and who are less likely to change their status.
"Social media users would do well to focus on real-life relationships," according to researchers. But there are other studies that have not identified such a negative impact on socializing sites, conditions in which experts urge us to use "moderately".