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Being a 'happy' teenager is linked to increased well-being in adulthood, new research finds.

For the first time, researchers from the University of Cambridge and the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing have analysed the link between a positive adolescence and well-being in midlife. Using information from 2776 individuals who participated in the 1946 British birth cohort study, the scientists tested associations between having a positive childhood and well-being in adulthood.

teenagers rated positively by their teachers were significantly more likely than those who received no positive ratings to have higher levels of well-being later in life, including a higher work satisfaction, more frequent contact with family and friends, and more regular engagement in social and leisure activities. Happy children were also much less likely than others to develop mental disorders throughout their lives - 60% less likely than young teens that had no positive ratings.

Hospitalized patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease who had a positive outlook about their recovery were less likely to die over the next 15 years and had better physical functioning after one year, according to a new study. Previous studies have found that heart patients’ optimism and expectations have positively influenced their functional status and return to work. But researchers say this study takes it a step further by showing how patient beliefs affect their health over the long term and ultimate survival. The findings are published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers at Duke University Medical Center followed 2,818 heart patients after they had coronary angiography to evaluate blood flow in the coronary arteries of the heart. They measured how patient expectations affected their recovery and ability to perform normal physical activities. Patients completed a questionnaire about their future lifestyle (e.g. “My heart condition will have little or no effect on my ability to do work,” “I expect that my lifestyle will suffer because of my heart condition”) and their future outcome (e.g. “I can still live a long and healthy life,” “I doubt that I will ever fully recover from my heart problems”).

the death rate of patients with the highest expectations was 31.8 deaths per 100 patients, compared to those with the lowest expectations at 46.2 deaths per 100 patients.

“Slowing down in the heat could be a subconscious regulation to protect us from damage, such as heat stroke,”

In other words, you don’t slow down because your body has reached some critical temperature. Instead, your brain slows you down to prevent you from ever reaching that critical temperature. It’s a subtle difference – but as the cyclists in the study discovered, it means that our physical “limits” are more negotiable than previously thought.

“To obtain a substantial heat adaptation, core temperature must be elevated and high sweat rates need to occur,” Dr. Jay explains. “The best way to do this is to combine exercise with heat exposure.”The study volunteers had averaged just 18 minutes a day of “moderate” or “intense” physical activity outdoors. In contrast, researchers have found that proper acclimatization takes 45 to 60 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise in the heat, either for seven to 10 consecutive days, or four to five times a week for two to three weeks.

According to the American Psychological Association, a whopping 75 percent of people in the United States feel stressed out. Almost half of us eat unhealthy because of it; 47 percent of us can't sleep because of it; it makes one in three of us depressed; and for 42 percent of us, it has gotten worse in the last year. There is so much making us anxious these days -- from big-picture problems like uncontrollable oil spills and a still-soft economy to garden-variety job, relationship, money, you-name-it woes -- that it's easy to think of chronic stress as the new normal.

the latest research reveals that revving up your body with exercise may be the most effective antidote. In lab studies, when scientists at Princeton put animals on a six-week aerobic conditioning program, then compared their brain cells with those of a group that remained sedentary, they found that the "brains on exercise" morphed over time into a biochemically calm state that remained steady even when the subjects were under stress. The nonexercising group's brain cells continued to react strongly to anxiety-inducing situations. This breakthrough discovery has scientists now saying that cardio workouts may actually remodel the brain to make it more resistant to stress hormones.

That's the idea behind this year's "Be Healthy Delaware: Get Up & Move!" fitness challenge, presented by the Delaware Center for Health Promotion and The News Journal. The goal is for participants to log 150 minutes of moderate physical activity a week for 10 weeks. Collectively, the goal is 5 million minutes in motion.All types of activities will be considered -- and encouraged -- including walking, running, biking, swimming, dancing, basketball, tennis, hiking, indoor rock climbing, even mowing the lawn. The key is to find activities that will get you moving."We're trying to get away from that word 'exercise' because it connotes some negative thoughts -- that you have to be athletic, super fit, young," said Marianne Carter, a registered dietitian and director of the Delaware Center for Health Promotion at Delaware State University in Dover. "People do have set ways of thinking when they hear the word 'exercise,' so using the term 'movement' tends to be friendlier."

Children of depressed parents are two to three times as likely to have major depression. Maternal depression in particular has been shown to have serious effects on development, primarily through an absence of responsiveness — the parent’s conscious and consistent mirroring and reciprocity of an infant’s gaze, babble and actions. “Depressed mothers often respond to their babies from the beginning in ways that dampen their enthusiasm and joy,” says Alicia Lieberman, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. This is problematic, as 10 to 20 percent of mothers go through depression at some point, and 1 in 11 infants experiences his mother’s depression in the first year.

Many researchers, particularly those with medical training, are eager to identify some kind of a “biologic marker” to make diagnosis scientifically conclusive. Recent studies have looked at the activity of cortisol, a hormone the body produces in response to stress. In preschoolers who have had a diagnosis of depression, as in depressed adults, cortisol levels escalate under stressful circumstances and then fail to recover with the same buoyancy as in typical children.

But in adults, cortisol reactivity can be an indication of anxiety. Other research has found that in young children, anxiety and depression are likewise intertwined. At Duke, Egger found that children who were depressed as preschoolers were more than four times as likely to have an anxiety disorder at school age. “Are these two distinct but strongly related syndromes?” asks Daniel Pine of the N.I.M.H. “Are they just slightly different-appearing clinical manifestations of the same underlying problem? Do the relationships vary at different ages? There are no definitive answers.”

The emotional health of college freshmen — who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school — has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago. In the survey, “The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 2010,” involving more than 200,000 incoming full-time students at four-year colleges, the percentage of students rating themselves as “below average” in emotional health rose. Meanwhile, the percentage of students who said their emotional health was above average fell to 52 percent. It was 64 percent in 1985. Every year, women had a less positive view of their emotional health than men, and that gap has widened.

“Exercise is a form of stress,” she pointed out. So is social isolation. Each, independently, induces the release of stress hormones (primarily corticosterone in rodents and cortisol in people). These hormones have been found, in multiple studies, to reduce neurogenesis. Except after exercise; then, despite increased levels of the hormones, neurogenesis booms. It’s possible, Dr. Stranahan said, that social connections provide a physiological buffer, a calming, that helps neurogenesis to proceed despite the stressful nature of exercise. Social isolation removes that protection and simultaneously pumps more stress hormones into the system, blunting exercise’s positive effects on brainpower.

The adventures of Paul, Black and Breinan offer a glimpse into a forgotten aspect of the running boom of the late 1970s. Preternaturally self-disciplined, they were among about 75 children (ages 8 to 13) who tackled the early years of the New York City Marathon in a time of novelty and naïveté. Organizers were uneasy about young runners, but it was not until 1981, records show, that age 16 became the requirement. New York’s official minimum age became 18 in 1988, after an advisory set by the International Marathon Medical Directors Association in the early 1980s, and reasserted in 2001. With no conclusive study, physicians still debate risks to children who compete in marathons, like muscular-skeletal injuries, stunted growth, burnout, parental pressures and the ability to handle heat stress.

Some marathons — Houston and Twin Cities in Minnesota — allow teenagers or admit younger runners on a case-by-case basis. Los Angeles has a program for schoolchildren ages 12 to 18.

Seeing is believing. To be the best runner you can be, it's crucial to begin with a positive vision. While thinking about running won't get you in shape, creative visualizations will motivate you to stick with a training plan, achieve your running goals and persevere in challenging race conditions.