A growing body of research says happiness is not only a state of mind, it’s a state of health. In one study at Carnegie Mellon University, researchers found that “happy” subjects exposed to cold and flu viruses were less susceptible to illness than their more negative counterparts. The other study was done in a most unusual place—at Villa Assumpta in Baltimore and at six other convents around the United States. Researchers looked at short autobiographies of 678 nuns. They found that those who used the most “positive” words lived, on average, ten years longer than nuns expressing more negative emotions.
