SMILING IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH

Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
 Thich Nhat Hanh quotes 

Improving your diet takes some planning. Getting fitter might involve some sweat.
Smiling, however, can be spontaneous and in the right circumstances, doesn't hurt at all.

But could smiling regularly leave you with more than just a warm inner glow?
Could it actually make you healthier?

American positive emotions expert Professor Barbara Fredrickson thinks it could.
So long as your smile is genuine rather than faked.

But it's not so much the smiles themselves that have the health-boosting effect
 – rather the emotions your smiles reflect.

Research has shown genuine smiles
 – also known as Duchenne smiles – 
can only be brought on by genuine positive emotions
 So you cannot force a genuine smile and it involves
 different facial muscles to fake smiles.If your smile is sincere though,
 it means you are experiencing positive emotions,Fredrickson says
 And her team has produced some of the growing evidence
 that such emotions – which include joy, contentment and gratitude – 
boost our health and wellbeing.

"Positive emotions are mind and body events.
 You have an interpretation of your circumstances and that leads
 to a biochemical cascade [that affects aspects of your body's functioning]."

Research has shown increasing our positive emotions
not only improves the way we learn and make decisions,
but also our immunity, our cardiovascular health,
and our emotional connection to others.
(which in turn boosts aspects of our physical health).

One study found people who had more positive emotions in daily life
were less likely than others to catch a cold.
And the link held true regardless of the person's level of negative emotions.
(In other words, having positive emotions is better for your health
 than just being free of negative emotions.)

There is also good evidence those with high levels of positive emotions
 get out of hospital faster after a cardiac event such as a heart attack, Fredrickson says.

Be happy, be healthy

The good news is you can learn ways to increase
the positive emotions you experience..

The more positive emotions you experience,
 the more likely you are to have healthy heart rhythms
 that make you more adaptive to different situations
 – in both a psychological and physical sense.

So how much do you need to smile?
 It's hard to say exactly, Fredrickson says.

"Well one smile isn't going to do it.
 It's more like we need to increase our daily diet of genuine smiles
 My research suggests the tipping point is
 three to one positive to negative emotions.
 That is, we need three positive emotions to lift us up
 for every one negative emotion that wears us down.
 So we need three or more smiles to each grimace, think of it that way."

Australian positive psychology expert, Dr Suzy Green,
says a number of studies have tracked people displaying
 genuine smiles in group photographs over time
 and compared them to others in the photos who did not show such smiles
The genuine smiles were linked to positive outcomes
 like higher personal wellbeing 30 years later, or even living longer.
 And these effects were seen even after controlling
 for other factors that might influence the results.

Smiling is also a part of "a very well validated" treatment known as 
dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT), used to treat people
with serious psychological conditions, says Green.
 Those undergoing DBT are told to "half-smile upon waking" at the start
 of each day and this is thought to help them learn to tolerate the distress
 brought on by their intense emotions.

While more research is needed, Green thinks we should
 all feel free to smile more straight away:
"Can it do anyone harm to smile a bit more?
 I don't think so. I don't think there's enough smiling in the world really."