Some say success brings happiness, and others say it doesn’t.
In reality, a new study suggests, happiness buys success.
According to LiveScience, scientists reviewed 225 studies involving 275,000 people and found that chronically happy people are in general more successful in their personal and professional lives. Importantly, their happiness tends to be a consequence of positive emotions, the researchers conclude.
“When people feel happy, they tend to feel confident, optimistic, and energetic and others find them likable and sociable,“ said Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California, Riverside. “Happy people are thus able to benefit from these perceptions.“
The results are detailed in the current issue of the Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association.
Previous research has often assumed that success and accomplishments bring happiness, Lyubomirsky and her colleagues write.
“We found that this isn’t always true,“ Lyubomirsky said. “Positive affect is one attribute among several that can lead to success-oriented behaviors. Other resources, such as intelligence, family, expertise and physical fitness, can also play a role in peoples’ successes.“
Among the good things that come from happiness: positive perceptions of self and others, sociability, creativity, a strong immune system, and effective coping skills.
“Happy people are more likely than their less happy peers to have fulfilling marriages and relationships, high incomes, superior work performance, community involvement, robust health and even a long life,“ Lyubomirsky said.

Certain back problems, like spinal disc injuries, might not respond well to yoga.

People plagued by chronic lower backaches may find some relief in yoga class, researchers reported.
Their study of 101 adults with persistent low back pain found that a gentle yoga class seemed to be a better alternative to either general exercise or a self-help book.
Though people in the exercise class eventually improved to a similar degree as their yoga-practicing counterparts, yoga class brought quicker results.
It’s possible that yoga’s benefits for both the body and mind explain the effects on lower back pain, the study’s lead author, Dr. Karen J. Sherman, told Reuters Health.
She stressed, though, that the study participants took a slower-moving form of yoga that was designed for people with lower back problems. Vigorous styles of yoga that include more-advanced poses could potentially make chronic back pain worse.
Sherman, a researcher at the Group Health Cooperative in Seattle, and her colleagues report the findings in the Annals of Internal Medicine this week.
It’s estimated that 14 million Americans practice yoga, often as a way to treat chronic aches and pains. But, in the Western medical literature at least, there have been no published studies on the effects of yoga on chronic back pain, Sherman said.
To look at the question, she and her colleagues randomly assigned 101 adults to take either 12 weeks of yoga class or 12 weeks of a standard therapeutic exercise class, or to follow the advice of a self-care book.
The yoga class was conducted in what’s known as the viniyoga style, which goes by the philosophy that poses should be adapted to the individual’s needs. The instructor was experienced in therapeutic yoga, and the class was limited to basic poses that would not put too much strain on the back, Sherman explained.
After 12 weeks, the yoga practitioners reported better back function than their peers in either of the other two groups.
After another three months, those in the exercise group had improved to a similar degree as the yogis.
The findings don’t clearly show whether yoga or standard, therapy-focused exercise is better for low back pain, Sherman said.
She pointed to one difference between the yoga practitioners and other two groups that remained over the long haul: At the last evaluation, the yogis were using less than half the amount of pain medication their peers were.
Viniyoga, like other forms of yoga, focuses on coordinating movement with the breath and focusing the mind. It’s possible, according to Sherman, that yoga allowed the back pain sufferers to become more aware of their habitual movements and postures that may have been contributing to their back problems in the first place.
Certain back problems, like spinal disc injuries, might not respond well to yoga, Sherman noted. But most people, she added, have “non-specific“ back pain involving muscles, soft tissue and nerves, and for them, therapeutic yoga could be worth a try.

Results of a new study lend support to the idea that people’s eating habits vary according to the season, with people eating more in the fall and winter, according to Reuters.
What’s more, their body weight and physical activity levels also appears to follow suit in many cases.
“In anticipation of the possible weight gain during long winter months, individuals need to maintain energy balance,“ study author Dr. Yunsheng Ma, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, told Reuters Health.
Various researchers have investigated the idea of seasonal variation in a person’s nutrient intake, but the findings have been inconsistent. Previous research has also investigated seasonal variations in physical activity levels and body weight.
In the current study, Ma and colleagues examined seasonal variations in all three areas: food intake, physical activity, and body weight. The 593 men and women included in their study, who were primarily recruited from a central Massachusetts health maintenance organization, were 48 years old, on average, and mostly overweight and obese.
At the start of the study, the researchers recorded the study participants’ body weight and reported dietary and exercise levels during the previous 24-hours. Similar information was recorded on a quarterly basis during a one-year
study period.
Overall, the study participants reported consuming about 1,963 kilocalories per day, with approximately half of those calories coming from carbohydrates and nearly a third from fats.
Their calorie intake was the highest during the fall season, however, during which they reported consuming 86 kilocalories more per day than during the spring, when their calorie intake was lowest, Ma and colleagues.
The study participants also showed seasonal variation in the distribution of these calories, the report indicates.
Their carbohydrate intake appeared to peak in the spring, for example, while their intake of total fat and saturated fat was the highest during the fall.
Further, the study participants’ body weight fluctuated by about one pound throughout the yearlong study period, but was the highest during the winter season, when they also reported participating in the least amount of physical activity, the researchers note. The study participants reported their highest
level of physical activity during the spring.
Such seasonal variations in food intake, physical activity, and body weight, were particularly true among men, middle-aged study participants, and nonwhites, as well as among those with a high school education or less, the report indicates.
The reason for the winter variations may be partly due to the “calorie dense“ foods consumed during the holiday season, Ma notes.

Popular anti-heartburn drugs such as proton-pump inhibitors that block stomach acid production heighten the risk of an increasingly common infectious form of diarrhea, researchers said.
According to Reuters, taking such drugs as AstraZeneca’s Nexium and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Losec and their generic versions tripled the risk of diarrhea blamed on the Clostridium difficile bacteria, the study concluded.
Frequently prescribed anti-heartburn drugs called H2 antagonists that include GlaxoSmithKline’s Zantac were found to double the risk of the bacterial diarrhea, the report said.
The drugs reduce gastric acid, opening the way for the bacteria to multiply in the digestive system.
Clostridium is the third-most common type of infectious diarrhea in patients aged 75 and older, study author Sandra Dial of McGill University, Montreal, wrote in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Exposure to Clostridium difficile bacteria, which causes infection and inflammation of the intestine, previously occurred mostly during hospital stays, but cases have increasingly been contracted in community settings, the study said. The number of community-acquired cases rose to 22 per 100,000 people in 2004 from 1 in 100,000 a decade earlier, it said.
Recent outbreaks in the United States and in the Canadian province of Quebec indicate strains of the bacteria may be increasingly deadly, according to previous research.
While antibiotics formerly blamed for outbreaks of the illness have declined in use, the acid-blocking drugs have become steadily more popular to treat ulcers and conditions such as gastric reflux disease, the report said.

People with psoriasis who smoke tend to have more severe cases than nonsmokers, but it may be a consequence and not a cause of the skin condition, researchers said.
According to Reuters, the condition, which afflicts up to 3 percent of the world’s population and runs in families, varies in severity though heavy smoking was associated with more severe cases, said Italian researchers from Istituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico in Rome.
“Specifically, patients who smoked more than a pack of cigarettes (more than 20 cigarettes) daily had twice the risk of more severe psoriasis compared with those who smoked 10 cigarettes or less per day,“ lead author Cristina Fortes wrote in this month’s issue of the journal Archives of Dermatology.
The number of years spent smoking also was associated with more severe forms of the condition, which afflicts between 1 percent and 3 percent of the world’s population and usually develops between the ages of 15 and 35.
However, an editorial in the journal said the study did not reveal whether smoking was a cause or a consequence of psoriasis, which most often appears in the scalp, knees, elbows and torso and frequently creates embarrassment.
A separate study in the same journal found a higher prevalence of obesity among psoriasis patients. The report by dermatologist Mark Herron of the Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City said smoking may have a role in causing psoriasis but obesity was definitely an outgrowth of having the condition.
Psoriasis, which appears to have a genetic component, is caused by an overactive immune system that causes skin cells to develop rapidly and rise to the skin surface where they are not shed rapidly enough and form itchy lesions, according to the National Psoriasis Foundation.
Outbreaks can be triggered by injuries such as scratches or sunburn and severe cases can affect the skin’s ability to control body temperature and prevent infections.

A new study lays to rest the notion that sleepless seniors might respond poorly to treatments that emphasize behavioral therapy over drugs.
According to the Center for the Advancement of Health, behavioral interventions for insomnia offer “a very powerful strategy“ in people over 55, said Michael Irwin, M.D., of UCLA, the lead author of a systematic evidence review. “Their benefits may be greater than pharmacologic treatments, because they can persist for a longer period of time.“
Treating insomnia with drugs may impair functioning, create dependency and worsen sleep after they are discontinued, he says.
Poor sleep is one of the more common complaints among adults, and the prevalence rate among the elderly is almost double that of younger adults. Moreover, researchers are now recognizing the importance of sleep to overall health.
“Insomnia is increasingly implicated as a predictor of cardiovascular and noncardiovascular disease mortality,“ says the review.
This review is the first in a new series of to be published in Health Psychology. Each evidence-based review will center on a specific psychological assessment or treatment conducted in the context of a physical disease process or risk reduction effort.
The systematic review included 23 randomized controlled trials involving more than 500 participants. The various non-drug treatments--cognitive behavioral therapy, relaxation and changes in sleep behavior--yielded “robust improvements“ in a variety of common problems such as poor sleep quality, difficulty falling asleep and awakening during the night.
Overall, effect sizes calculated in the review “are at the moderate-to-large level, which is very comparable to the kind of benefits that you see with pharmacologic treatments,“ says Irwin.
A particularly encouraging finding is that older insomniacs who suffer from frequent nighttime awakenings--the most common complaint in this group--report a better-than-average response to behavioral treatments.