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"17 Ways to Cut Your Risk of Stroke, Dementia and Depression All at Once"

The main take aways:

The study, which looked at data from 59 meta-analyses, identified six factors that lower your risk of brain diseases:

• Low to moderate alcohol intake (Consuming one to three drinks a day had a smaller benefit than consuming less than one drink a day.)
• Cognitive activity, meaning regular engagement in mentally stimulating tasks like reading or doing puzzles
• A diet high in vegetables, fruit, dairy, fish and nuts
• Moderate or high levels of physical activity
• A sense of purpose in life
• A large social network

[...]

The study also identified 13 health characteristics and habits that make you more likely to develop dementia, a stroke or late-life depression. (Altogether, the protective and harmful factors add up to 19 factors because two of them, diet and social connections, can increase or decrease risk, depending on their type and quality.)

• High blood pressure
• High body mass index
• High blood sugar
• High total cholesterol
• Depressive symptoms
• A diet high in red meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, sweets and sodium
• Hearing loss
• Kidney disease
• Pain, particularly forms that interfere with activity
• Sleep disturbances (for example, insomnia or poor sleep quality) or sleep periods longer than eight hours
• Smoking history
• Loneliness or isolation
• General stress or stressful life events (as reported by study subjects)

"What makes people flourish?"

A study about what makes people not just survive but flourish. It got answers from over 200k people around the world.

The aspects they asked about:

1. Happiness and life satisfaction: how content and fulfilled people feel with their lives.
2. Physical and mental health: how healthy people feel, in both body and mind.
3. Meaning and purpose: whether people feel their lives are significant and moving in a clear direction.
4. Character and virtue: how people act to promote good, even in tough situations.
5. Close social relationships: how satisfied people are with their friendships and family ties.
6. Financial and material stability: whether people feel secure about their basic needs, including food, housing and money.

Honestly the list above for how they broke it down is the main thing I took away from this article. A lot of the data seemed either things I already believe, or were somewhat expected.

There was one stat about work status leading to people flourishing more, which is pretty obvious. I thought it interest that self-employed people were higher than those who worked for others, but I suspect that is a fair bit of survivorship bias as the people working for themselves are the ones who had "made it" and found it able to fund their life, and thus they were happier, and those who tried who make it but fell short are underrepresented as they probably identified more as "working for someone else."

"It’s official: Research has found that libraries make everything better."

Far from an earthshaking study in its breadth and depth, but it's good to see and hopefully it will drive some greater awareness and investment.

Science has backed up what many of us have long been saying: the library rocks. A study from the New York Public Library surveyed 1,974 users on how the library makes them feel and how it affects their lives, and the results are overwhelmingly positive.

The researchers' analysis (which used positive psychology's PERMA model, if that means anything to you) discovered that libraries are good for people, their well-being, and their communities. Not only that, but the positive societal impacts are more pronounced in lower-income communities, even more reason to make sure we're funding and supporting libraries. Don't let the ghosts of Reagan and Thatcher tell you otherwise, government can help people!

"Five things we’ve learned making a series on community-led mental health projects around the world"

An interesting collection of tidbits from this past year. Positive.news has been in my RSS feed and normally isn't something I've found much to repost or share, but two of the five segments they highlight in this piece were particularly interesting to me.

3. Guatemalan parents have an enviable childcare situation

When photographer James Rodrigues filed his shots of the Indigenous women's circles project in Guatemala, we were interested to spot lots of women who were carrying on their backs babies that weren't their own. It seems that parenting in Guatemala is different to the UK – it's shared out more equally among the community. It chimed with a new University of Cambridge study of the Indigenous Mbendjele BaYaka in the Republic of Congo, which had caught my eye. The researchers found that in this community, more than half of a baby's cries are attended to by the mother's support network rather than her.

The "it takes a village" approach is so foreign in today's world. I would love to live and work in a way which allowed for this and for me to aid in raising and childcare for friends and family.

4. Once again, Nordic countries lead the way

What is it about the Nordic countries and their ability to top virtually every ranking of human development, from public healthcare to education and happiness? Even those experiencing psychosis, one of the most feared symptoms of mental illness, fare better in Finland. Just 15% of people diagnosed with schizophrenia are employed in the UK. In Finland, 86% of patients with severe mental health conditions return to work and education. How? Back in the 1980s when Finland had one of Europe's highest rates of psychosis, psychiatrists developed a model of care that transformed the outcomes of those in crisis. Now the UK is trialling it, with a five-year study of the 'open dialogue' approach at NHS mental health clinics in Dorset, Kent and London. The results are due in April 2024, and the psychiatrists we spoke to believe they could revolutionise treatment of mental illness in Britain, and beyond.

Not much to add here, very interesting to hear and I'll be eagerly awaiting the results in April if this shows promise.

Delight vs. Joy

Delight is more occasional; joy is more ever-present and waiting. - Ross Gay

8 decades of research on the secrets to a happy life

Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger discusses the lessons in the long running research into what makes people happy. He starts the video by noting his original TEDx talk highlighted that the recurring biggest aspect of happiness is people who have good warm connections with others. This video is an expansion on that talk. I am watching it now, as I post it, and really enjoying it. I can tell I am going to implement parts of it in my life and how I think about my friends and relationships.

International "Wellbeing Rankings" paper

It started because I came across this post which is a Finnish psychologist discussing three things the Finns supposedly do.

However, in reading related discussions, I came across a very important note: Finland might be happy, but it also has some of the highest suicide rates in the world (4th highest in Europe.)

I also was brought to the above link, which ranks countries both for happiness and for unhappiness, then enabling a combined ranking.

From the paper's abstract:

Combining data on around four million respondents from the Gallup World Poll and the US Daily Tracker Poll we rank 164 countries, the 50 states of the United States and the District of Colombia on eight wellbeing measures. These are four positive affect measures - life satisfaction, enjoyment, smiling and being well-rested – and four negative affect variables – pain, sadness, anger and worry.

Digging into the data, the happiest place in the world is Hawaii. The happiest non-US state is Taiwan. The happiest European nation is Austria.

Out of curiosity, I pulled the data of the US states I've lived in to see how they directly compare

State	Cantril	Enjoy	Smile	Well rested	Pain	Sadness	Worry	Anger	Overall
Georgia	29	30	37	62	38	46	48	50	18
Washington	41	19	41	102	73	41	72	4	33
Florida	50	52	25	81	43	69	90	79	47

I can hear you now asking, "What the hell is cantril?" - I wasn't familiar either. Here is the question they used which drove the cantril scores:

Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from zero at the bottom to ten at the top. Suppose we say that the top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. If the top step is 10 and the bottom step is 0, on which step of the ladder do you feel you personally stand at the present time?

Interesting stuff. I didn't expect Georgia to rank higher than Washington.

"If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right"

I came across this paper by this video on Ali Abdaal's YouTube channel and I held off posting about it, wanting to do my own write up on it. I like Ali's channel and find his videos much further on the info side of the infotainment scale, but I thought I would do it better. However, digging into the paper, it's just them distilling the research of others - which Ali then distills even further and the truth is - I think he did a fantastic job and encourage you to watch his video, even with the ad placement in the middle of the video.

However, as you'll note, I've linked the actual paper itself in case you want to go through and read it yourself. I might still write a larger post, as I think there is something to be said about a mental shift for healthy and proper budgeting to put happiness closer to the front - not in a hedonistic sense, but just in the mentality with which you approach budgeting. But I don't have that post figured out yet. Look for that sometime later.

From the paper's Abstract:

The relationship between money and happiness is surprisingly weak, which may stem in part from the way people spend it. Drawing on empirical research, we propose eight principles designed to help consumers get more happiness for their money. Specifically, we suggest that consumers should (1) buy more experiences and fewer material goods; (2) use their money to benefit others rather than themselves; (3) buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones; (4) eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance; (5) delay consumption; (6) consider how peripheral features of their purchases may affect their day-to-day lives; (7) beware of comparison shopping; and (8) pay close attention to the happiness of others.

Bertrand Russell on Lying

Take again the question of lying. I do not deny that there is a great deal too much lying in the world and that we should all be the better for an increase of truthfulness; but I do deny, as I think every rational person must, that lying is in no circumstances justified. I once in the course of a country walk saw a tired fox at the last stages of exhaustion still forcing himself to run. A few minutes afterwards I saw the hunt. They asked me if I had seen the fox and I said I had. They asked me which way he had gone and I lied to them. I do not think I should have been a better man if I had told the truth.

I completely forgot I was still working on The Conquest of Happiness in today's reading list. Whoops.

Bertrand Russell reminds us that telling someone to be happier isn't exactly productive

From The Conquest of Happiness:

There is no arguing with a mood; it can be changed by some fortunate event, or by a change in our bodily condition, but it cannot be changed by argument.

From the Archives: The Evil F-Word: Fine

It's easier to convince us that what we're feeling is happiness, simply because we can't tell the difference. If I'm not in active pain, then I must be happy, right? I must be fine, right?

I originally wrote this post 7 years ago, but it is more applicable today than ever before.

Give a dog a bone: Spending money on pets promotes happiness

Pets bring happiness in many ways. A new study suggests that even spending money on pets can bring happiness. I think this makes sense, there is another study that suggests giving to others or doing things for other people can bring happiness, so why wouldn't doing that for our animals who are in many ways dependent on us, not also bring happiness.