Prospective data from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative study of older US adults, was analyzed to examine the relationship between optimism and heart failure, adjusting for sociodemographic, biological, behavioral, and psychological covariates. Higher optimism was associated with a lower risk of incident heart failure during the follow-up period, and these effects persisted when accounting for covariates.
Positive psychological well-being, especially optimism, protects against the incidence, and somewhat against the progression, of cardiovascular disease through a broad array of mechanisms, according to this extensive literature review.
