As expected, happy people also take better care of their health than unhappy people. When a person's happiness meter is high, health behaviors improve. People tend to eat the right food, exercise more and go on to regular check-ups.
, Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Jack P. Shonkoff Professor of Child Health and Development at HSPH and at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, explains that early childhood “toxic stress”—the sustained activation of the body’s stress response system resulting from such early life experiences as chronic neglect, exposure to violence, or living alone with a parent suffering severe mental illness—has harmful effects on the brain and other organ systems. Among these effects is a hair-trigger physiological response to stress, which can lead to a faster heart rate, higher blood pressure, and a jump in stress hormones." excerpt from Harvard school of public health magazine"