Happy people have less hypertension

Laughter may well be the best medicine for cardiovascular disease, with a new study showing happiness is linked to a 10% reduced risk of hypertension.

In a prospective study of 6384 middle aged public servants in the UK, researchers found an inverse relationship between ‘high emotional vitality’ and risk of incident hypertension over a 10-year period.

The study showed that for each standard deviation increase in emotional vitality there was a  4-5% reduction in incident