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The Key to Happiness Is Health
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Happiness is the one thing that people have dreamed about, spoken about, and sought more than anything else in all of human history. Indeed, the range of ways in which we’ve strived to achieve pleasure is maybe only equaled by our species’ unwavering concentration on it, and that’s across millennia, countries, and situations. From ancient Greek thinkers like Aristotle and religious writings like the Quran and the Bible to current happiness research and self-help books, the pursuit of pleasure is a universal human endeavour.
Although people have tried to find fulfilment in social connections, spirituality, social standing, substance abuse, financial success, and material possessions, it is now widely accepted that the quality of one’s physical health is the single most important factor in determining one’s level of contentment throughout life. The importance of health to our potential for joy may be shown in two ways: As a first point, our mood is significantly influenced by our physical health. Vitality, drive, and resilience are all qualities we commonly attribute to our emotional well-being but which are more accurately indicators of our physical fitness. Few would argue that one cannot find joy in spite of the gloom brought on by medical disease, but all would agree that it is more challenging.
Second, the extent to which we are able to perform things depends on our level of physical fitness. Happiness, even in the finest of circumstances, can be as fickle as the weather or the stock market. Confining factors such as illness and handicap that hinder our mobility and ability to shape our environment, interact with and experience the people and things that matter to us, and pursue our passions render pleasure as fleeting as a rainbow.
Research shows that only 2.7% of American adults are currently physically healthy based on standards of not smoking, obtaining regular exercise, consuming a nutritious diet, and maintaining a recommended body-fat level based on DEXA scans (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry; 1). This may help explain why happiness levels in the United States have been on the decline since the 1990s (2).
New findings from the fields of metabolic science and behavioural neuroscience shed even more light on how our bodies directly and indirectly control our mental health and state of mind. The cornerstone of our physical and mental health is the symbiotic interaction between our lifestyle choices and our underlying biology, as seen in the above graphic. At every stage of life, our actions and internal processes work together as a symbiotic pair.
At any one time, our emotions and capacities are the result of a tangled web of activities at the level of our genes and epigenome, the capacity of our organs, and the state of our hormones and neurotransmitters. Our feelings and actions may have positive or negative effects on our health depending on whether the cycle is vicious or virtuous. You may have altered the expression of hundreds of genes last night depending on the quality of sleep you got, your diet may provide an abundance or deficiency of the ingredients necessary for your body to produce and convert neurotransmitters and hormones, and the frequency and intensity of your physical activity throughout the day may alter the function of dozens of hormones and even the state of your gut microbiome.
In light of current knowledge, it’s no longer feasible to dismiss the importance of the decisions we make about our diet and daily routine. Actually, they are potent levers and control switches that determine our potential for health and pleasure.
We now appreciate this truth more than ever before: happiness is an inside battle. An relationship between our actions and biology accounts for the mind-body link first noted by philosophers millennia ago. However, this study explains more than just one phenomena. What it also shows is the incredible influence our healthy habits have on our capacity for happiness.
Reference
“Health Is the Secret to Happiness.” Psychology Today, 1 Nov. 2022, www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-healthy-journey/202209/health-is-the-secret-happiness.
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