By: Marissa Cevallos – Published July, 25, 2011  www.latimes.com

 

One more reason to keep your glass half full: Optimists might be less likely to have a stroke.

In new research, the more people believed good things would happen, the less likely they were to suffer a stroke within two years.  Psychology researchers examined 6,044 stroke-free adults who said how much they agreed with statements like “In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.”

Two years later, the researchers tracked which participants had suffered a stroke.  They found the more optimistic the person, the lower the odds of a stroke:  On an optimism scale of 3 to 18, each point increase in optimism was associated with an approximate 10% decrease in the likelihood of a stroke.

When the researchers took into consideration a host of other variables related to out-look on life, anxiety, cynical hostility, depression, negative affect, neuroticism and pessimism – a smaller but still significant association between optimism and stroke remained.  The results were published on-line Thursday in the journal Stroke.