1.  Make returning war veterans feel at home.  Simple home modifications—like installing exterior lighting or widening doorways—can enhance the comfort and security of returning soldiers, especially if they suffer from vision loss or post-traumatic stress or use a wheelchair, says Danise Levine, director of UB’s Center for Inclusive Design and Environmental Access. Levine helped design two homes for veterans and their families through the Wounded Warrior Home Project.

2.  Floss every day to protect against pneumonia and heart disease. Good oral hygiene may help prevent pneumonia and heart disease, according to two researchers. Professor of medicine, Ali A. El Solh, MD, indicates that periodontal microbes are a possible reservoir for recurrent lower respiratory tract infections in nursing home residents. And research done by Distinguished Professor and Vice Provost Robert J. Genco, DDS, shows a strong association between periodontal microbes and non-fatal heart attacks.

3. To lose weight, eat the same foods over and over. Variety may be the spice of life but it’s no good for your waistline, according to Leonard Epstein, PhD, professor of pediatrics and social and preventive medicine. In a study, he found that when women ate as many servings of macaroni and cheese as they wanted every day for five days, they reduced their intake by 30 calories. On the other hand, women who ate macaroni and cheese just once a week for five weeks increased their intake by 100 calories. Epstein said that the first group reduced their intake because of “habituation.”  In other words, repetition may discourage overeating.

4.  Be a humble leader, and be more effective in the workplace. Humble leaders are more effective and better liked in the workplace, according to research by Bradley Owens, PhD, assistant professor of organization and human resources in the UB School of Management.  ”Admitting mistakes, spotlighting follower strengths and modeling teachability are the core of humble leadership. These three behaviors are powerful predictors of the leader’s personal growth, as well as the organization’s growth,” explains Owens, who interviewed leaders at military, manufacturing, health care, financial services, retailing and religious organizations.

5.  Talk to your child about bullying. A number of bullying cases made major news last year, followed by many well-meaning calls for new laws and programs. Sometimes the most important thing parents can do is have a conversation with their child about bullying, says researcher Amanda Nickerson, PhD, director of UB’s Jean M. Alberti Center for the Prevention of Bullying Abuse and School Violence. “Ask explicitly if there is bullying at school, and then listen and empathize when they tell their stories,” she says. “Kids are more aware of the peer culture and the culture of the school to know what will make it worse and what will make it better.”

6. Read more fantasy to combat loneliness. Reading fantasies like the popular Twilight vampire series or the Harry Potter collection of novels helps to satisfy a need for human connection, according to the research of associate professor of psychology Shira Gabriel, PhD, and graduate student Ariana Young.   When we become engrossed in fictional narratives we feel close to others in the comfort of our own space and at our own convenience, their research shows.  ”In our subjects, this led to a reported increase in life satisfaction and positive mood, which are two primary outcomes of belonging,” Gabriel says.

7.  For better health, reflect on the things that give your life meaning. Feelings of spirituality or religiosity appear to offer protection against emotional distress and physical ailments, according to the research of Michael J. Poulin, PhD, assistant professor of psychology. Poulin studied people’s response to the traumatic events of 9/11 and found those who had a personal commitment to spiritual or religious beliefs were in better health than those in the study who expressed no religious or spiritual proclivities.

8.  Maintain separate email accounts to avoid being scammed. Having separate accounts for work and personal email helps you more easily sort through cluttered inboxes and focus on the details of email. This reduces the likelihood of being deceived by online scammers phishing for personal and financial information, according to the research of Arun Vishwanath, PhD, associate professor of communication, and H. Raghav Rao, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the UB School of Management.

9.  Teach math to your toddler for academic success through high school. Very young children have the potential to learn math that is complex and sophisticated, according to the research of professors Doug Clements, PhD, and Julie Sarama, PhD. Preschool children’s knowledge of mathematics predicts their later school success into high school. Further, it predicts later reading achievement.  Clements’ and Sarama’s pre-kindergarten Building Blocks project helps children “mathematize” their everyday activities, from building blocks to art and stories to puzzles and games.

10.  Be nice to nurses—they may save your life. According to the Institute of Medicine, nurses are the health-care professionals most likely to intercept and prevent medical mistakes, says assistant professor of nursing Sharon Hewner, PhD, RN.  Hewner developed a new patient-safety course to teach nursing students how to spot and prevent potential medical errors.  She hopes the course will be emulated and rolled out at nursing schools nationwide.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.

To Your Health (and happiness, too) The Saturday Evening Post

As Hope entered her 50s, though, something clicked in her, and she felt somehow replenished.

“When I was young,” she says, speaking by phone from her office at a small college in upstate New York, “I used to drive like an old lady. I drive faster now. I don’t worry so much about what other people think. I speak my mind. I don’t know if it was anything in particular. It was just a gradual awakening after I turned 50.”

She compares her age to her favorite season, autumn. “It’s when the trees are full of color and have their most extreme beauty, just before winter,” she says. “That’s the same season for being in your 50s.”

Two years ago, Hope got engaged. But she doesn’t attribute happiness to late love. Rather, she attributes late love to happiness. In a sense, time wedged an opening—like a stream of water cracking open a big boulder—that made it possible for someone to come into her life.

Hope’s growing happiness may be more the rule than an exception, with a number of recent reports suggesting that just when people start needing glasses to read a restaurant menu, life begins to come into clearer focus.

Most recently there was the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a survey of 1.2 million Americans between 18 and 85, as well as a separate Gallup poll of 340,000. Both surveys produced similar findings—that people’s sense of well-being follows a U-shaped trend, starting high in youth, dipping in one’s 30s and 40s, hitting a low point at 50, then beginning to gather momentum.

“We don’t know why well-being seems to rise with age,” says Nikki Duggan, Healthways’ director of operations and analytics. “Though one trend we see is that over time people feel more respected.”

Other factors, say experts, may be that over time people become more realistic about their expectations, more accepting about what they have or haven’t achieved, and more resilient when things don’t pan out. For many, there’s a growing appreciation of life that may be missing in the years of striving and stress typical of one’s 30s and 40s.

The topic of happiness has blossomed into an industry—from the positive psychology movement to new ways of approaching mental health treatment to happiness skill-building to a book-publishing niche that has almost become its own genre. There are international conferences that look at what happiness means to business and to national and global economics; the south Asian kingdom of Bhutan has a Gross National Happiness Index; Britain recently started a project to measure the national GWB, or general well-being, and this year, Australia hosted the 5th annual World Happiness Forum.

Happiness is particularly relevant in the U.S., which was, after all, the first country to make the happiness of its citizens part of its core mission, starting with the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson substituted what must have seemed an ethereal notion, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” for a more common phrase of the time, “life, liberty and property.” The ideal of happiness was truly radical at a time when humans were generally presumed to be subjects whose sole purpose was to serve the state and its rulers.

The topic is no less important now than it was then, but the recent efforts to compare the relative happiness of the different ages is more relevant than ever: It is projected that life expectancy in the U.S. will rise to 79.5 years by 2020. According to the 2010 census, 40.3 million Americans, 13 percent of the population, are 65 or older. That number is expected to reach 72 million by 2030 and more than double to 89 million, 20 percent of the population, by 2050.

To be sure, happiness is an elusive topic, a vague term for something we seek without necessarily having a definite idea of what it is we’re after.

llustrations by Koren Shadmi.

“There’s a lot of confusion between happiness and pleasure,” says Matthieu Ricard, author of Why Meditate? Working With Thoughts and Emotions and the French translator for the Dalai Lama. “Happiness is about well-being, a sense of fulfillment. That’s different from how happiness is promoted—it’s all about do this or use that and you’ll find happiness. That is more of a recipe for exhaustion than flourishing. It has to be more a way of being than a momentary pleasant stage. In that sense, pleasure can contribute to happiness, but it can also undermine it, if, for example, it becomes a destructive obsession.”

Many experts prefer the term “well-being” because it describes an overall condition rather than a fleeting feeling of pleasure. Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist whom many regard as the father of positive psychology, called his latest book Flourish, and introduced an acronym, PERMA, to describe the elements of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.

The recent studies suggest that as people age they get better at all of the above. Reported in a series of graphs, Gallup-Healthways’ survey showed that as the years go by Americans are more satisfied and feel more respected at work. They smoke less and eat a healthier diet. Older Americans worry less and are less sad and depressed than people in other age groups, and that trend rises into their 60s despite less robust physical health.

“As you age, you realize that you can be happy in the present,” says Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage. “You don’t have to wait until you achieve something more. It’s something you cultivate in the present by connecting to social support networks and paying attention to what’s happening in your life right now.”

Another factor may be the ability to bounce back from adversity or just to keep things in perspective.

“My sense is that unless people change their attitudes and behavior, they remain with the optimal levels of happiness they have,” Achor says. “But what they do gain over time is resilience. They can experience stress and failure and find they’re able to overcome.”

The flip side of the age issue is that unhappiness—a deep, fundamental sense that life has gone off the rails—is occurring at younger ages, with depression occurring earlier than in the past. The mean onset of depression diagnoses in the 1970s was 29. In 2006, it was 14.5. Achor blames technology for this phenomenon. He describes what has happened to modern citizens as a “connection paradox” caused by the urgency to be always linked up and wired in. You can’t be happy if you’re compulsively trying to connect because of a feeling—or fear—of being disconnected or disengaged.

“People are doing too many things,” Achor says. “They’re stressed, running after everything possible. Their brains, even in down moments, are not down. They’re connected to virtual worlds and multitasking. But what we know from research is that the more personal projects a person has on their plate, the more their brain’s resources are spread out, and they don’t get to enjoy them. The more multi-tasking we do, the less happy we are.”

Focus and self-discipline improve with age, and there may be some advantage for people who didn’t grow up mesmerized and conditioned by omnipresent flashing screens, say the experts.

Age, especially for people who have enjoyed a moderate level of success, may also ease the disappointment of youthful high hopes of fame and fortune.

For Roger Stewart, now retired, contentment came from accepting that what he had achieved in his career—a highly rewarding post as an executive editor at a big-city newspaper—was more than adequate professionally, even though he’d started in journalism with the goal of becoming well-known on a national scale.

“When I was in my 30s, I remember listening to an older man I looked up to who was a professor of philosophy, saying, ‘Hey, there are certain stars in the world of philosophy, and I know now I’m never going to be one of them, but I’m comfortable with who I am,’” Roger recalls. “I remember feeling shocked by that. How could he accept being anything but number one? Today, I get it. Making it to the so-called ‘top of your profession’ is not the key to happiness.”

“As you get older, your outlook certainly does change,” says Hope Ferguson, the communications specialist. A number of factors come into play, and one of the biggest is the inescapable experience of living through enough triumphs and setbacks to put things in perspective. “You see the passage of time. You’ve lost people. You see that life has an end, and that makes you want to seize the moment.”

None other than Aristotle asserted that happiness is the goal of goals. But, in researching The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study, Howard S. Friedman, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, came to the conclusion that perhaps happiness ought not to be a goal at all.

Friedman wasn’t even looking at happiness per se. Rather he was analyzing factors that influence longevity. What he found was that “certain behaviors that resulted in happiness also added to people’s longevity.”

In other words, there’s a correlation between happiness and health, and therefore lifespan. But what’s unique about Friedman’s discovery is that “happiness was really just a byproduct of certain habits” rather than an end in itself. For this reason, Friedman doesn’t believe in the happiness skill-building exercises advocated by many positive psychologists because those habits are not sustainable over time and, more important, because they are less vital than the basic healthy habits that we all know are good for us.

“The pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of doing meaningful things,” Friedman says. “Happy people have certain behaviors. They’re active, they’re socially engaged, they have good relationships and are involved in their communities. They’re absorbed by their work and careers. If they want to do something, they don’t worry that it’s going to take too much effort or be too stressful. They’re persistent. They’re not impulsive. They don’t drink too much. They’re not attracted by destructive relationships. They’re not vain or self-centered. What we found is that happiness is what you get when you live a thriving life.”

Out of Friedman’s research comes a word of warning to those who are happy now, and a word of encouragement to those who are still reaching for it: People who have good habits can lose them and people who don’t can get them.

Even though happiness may naturally rise in one’s 50s—a reward for a life well lived—each of us has to keep earning that reward at every age.

The Pursuit of Happiness The Saturday Evening Post

Medical students David and John Gallacher from Cardiff University in Wales, UK, say that women in committed relationships have better mental health, while men in healthy relationships have better physical health, concluding that “on balance it probably is worth making the effort.”

Men’s physical health probably improves because of their partner’s positive influence on their lifestyle and “the mental bonus for women may be due to a greater emphasis on the importance of the relationship”, they write in the student BMJ, the international medical journal for students.

But not all relationships are good for you, they point out, referring to evidence that single people have better mental health than those in strained relationships.

The bottom line is no surprise: Don’t shy away from romantic relationships. Just try to avoid the bad ones.

Strong Relationships, Healthier People The Saturday Evening Post

“Many of us wish that family gatherings were more like what we remember from our childhoods or see on television,” explains Zimmerman. “But dreams of a perfect holiday season can quickly become nightmares—and sometimes lead to bouts of depression.”

To treat yourself this holiday season, Zimmerman offers these five tips:

• Avoid or reduce alcohol consumption. Liquor is a depressant that can deepen existing emotional problems.
• Include exercise in your daily routine. A walk in the sunlight will add energy and help counteract seasonal affective disorder (SAD).
• Maintain close friendships and confide in those you trust. Talking about your feelings helps reduce or eliminate the blues.
• Read one of the dozens of books on the market to discover stress-busting tips.
• Face the facts. No holiday gathering is perfect.

Those who have feelings of depression lasting more than two weeks to seek professional advice, adds Zimmerman. Symptoms of depression may include sleeplessness or sleeping too much, a lack of appetite, inability to concentrate and feeling hopeless.

Stress Less About the Holidays The Saturday Evening Post

In the Mayo Clinic study, MRI scans of people with varying levels of grief exhibited activity in the brain’s pain network. Those with complicated grief also showed activity in the pleasure and reward areas of the brain. Researchers theorize that the additional activity may stem from a lingering attachment to the departed and an inability to accept that the person has passed on.

Experts say that participating in support groups often helps dissipate normal grief. But left untreated, the sadness could progress and require medical intervention.

Have you, or do you know someone who has dealt with grief in a healthy way?

What do you suggest to relieve grief before it becomes debilitating?

For more information on the grieving process please visit, MayoClinic.com.

Graphing Grief The Saturday Evening Post

“For some, happiness is a bottle of wine shared with your romantic interest. For others, happiness is a silent walk on the beach in a light rain. Whatever your particular definition of happiness may be, we believe that the idea of being beautiful really comes down to two big umbrella concepts: First, love the people in your life and practice trusting and forgiving them. Second, and equally important, love yourself and all of your imperfections (many of which you’re working to correct, right?).

“Opening your world up to look beyond the cursory perceptions is what really gives you the inner strength and beauty to find happiness. Ask yourself:

“Do you have relationships that are strong and healthy and contribute to your happiness?

“Have you found ways to give to others and show gratitude for the gifts you’ve been given?

“And are you able to go beyond the superficiality that surrounds you in your day-to-day life, to explore and connect with the deeper and more meaningful purposes in life?

“Those questions really lie at the center of making ‘beauty’ a full-circle concept. The more beautiful you look and feel, the happier you are. And the happier you are, the more beautiful you look and feel and the more you can share with others your purpose in life. And that’s a beautiful thing.”

Be Beautiful The Saturday Evening Post

This month, Mental Health America is celebrating its 100th anniversary —a remarkable legacy of one man who turned his personal struggle into a national movement.

Around the turn of the 20th century, recent Yale graduate and newly minted Wall Street financier Clifford W. Beers suffered his first episode of bipolar disorder (manic depressive illness) and spent the following three years learning firsthand of the inadequate and often cruel treatment of people with mental illnesses.

Upon his release, Beers set out to expose the abuse and reform care. In 1908, his autobiography roused the nation to the plight of people with mental illnesses. And on February 19, 1909, Beers, along with the philosopher William James and psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, created the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, an organization we know today as Mental Health America. The modern mental health movement had begun.

Today, we remain focused on many of the issues highlighted by Beers in a speech delivered in June 1932 to the French National League for Mental Hygiene: a struggle to eradicate stigma, to focus on prevention as well as treatment, and to bring mental illness under the umbrella of care designated for physical illnesses. Consider his words:

“One who founds a movement of vital importance to humanity inevitably builds better than he knows. In my earliest plans and first editions of my autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself, the salient features of the mental hygiene movement were outlined as follows: scientific treatment and humane care for the mentally ill; research into the causes and cure of disorders of the mind; and the application of methods and measures for their prevention. The movement, however, is now so broad in scope and purpose that it can be of possible benefit to everyone.

“One [result] is the remarkable and steady change in the attitude of the public toward disorders of the mind, toward those who suffer from them and, also, toward the institutions in which such patients are treated. Indeed, so-called insanity is now widely regarded as a disease and not as a disgrace.

“A second outstanding result of organized work in mental hygiene is the bringing of the medical profession, especially the psychiatrists, into close and continuous cooperation with the lay public, particularly the leaders in education, law, religion, and in social work.

“With this merging of forces, the mental hygiene movement will not only reach its known objectives, but will continue to develop and will endure so long as the mind of man serves as the sanctuary of the divine spark that makes possible such work and such movements as have brought this distinguished audience together in this great amphitheater tonight.”

Inspired by the work of Beers and many others over the past 100 years, Mental Health America continues to transform our nation’s approach to mental health. The Mental Health Parity Act ended discrimination in insurance coverage for people with mental illness, removing some of the financial barriers that have kept people from treatment. We must, and will, continue our efforts to remove the stigma of mental illnesses, effectively treat and prevent mental health conditions, and promote positive mental health as a reality for all.

For more information from Mental Health America about advocacy, education, and support for Americans with mental health conditions, visit mentalhealthamerica.net .

A Century of Mental Health The Saturday Evening Post

Dean Ornish, author of several bestsellers—Love and Survival and Reversing Heart Disease—and I walk past the sweets table and play with the fruit. In this magical environment, we both lament that everyone we know could not enjoy the moment we were experiencing. The occasion seemed ideal to ask Dean to expand on a comment he made at a seminar earlier that week as he poetically described his personal battle with depression.

“When you are depressed, for the first time in your life you think you have seen the world with absolute clarity,” said Ornish. “And the reality is painfully depressing. No good can come of this existence, and your personal contribution is worthless. Until then all the times you thought you were happy, you were just deluding yourself.”

Our session highlighted the growing knowledge of the connection of depression with disease. At a first cut, approximately 18 percent of the lost workdays are attributed to depression. But what about more organic ailments that most of us think occur without any involvement from the brain? For example after a heart attack, the second most important predictor of death is depression. Patients who are depressed are more likely to have complications after heart surgery, including infection—perhaps a result of the reduced immunologic function associated with depression. They also get readmitted to the hospital more often and die more frequently after heart surgery.

The converse is also true. Patients who have someone or thing that they love at home survive major illness better than those who do not. This is true even if the loved entity is a pet. They also do better if they belong to an organization that can provide them social support, which is perhaps why churchgoers often seem to survive more often than expected.

Dean reached his lowest point of depression while in college in Texas. All the precipitating factors appeared stacked against him—a lonely dorm room with a brilliant roommate who made him feel inadequate, as well as a high-pressure, pre-med existence in an unfriendly environment far from home. He contemplated suicide by several means and had worked out the details meticulously.

Mental illness afflicts 20 percent of adults and is the largest cause of work loss in the country. As a society we have historically ignored the problem and felt the disease to be a weakness of those suffering. Yet depression is caused by biochemical changes in the mind that are related to genetic as well as environmental factors. And they are responsive to aggressive pharmacologic and environmental treatments.

Numerous herbal remedies have been shown to help patients with mild to moderate depression. More conventional approaches with cognitive-behavioral therapy and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Prozac and Zoloft, may also be useful. Dean’s dedicated parents saved his life by rescuing him at school and supporting him through recovery. For Ornish, life changed.

“Depression, like any form of suffering, can be a doorway for transforming our lives for the better,” Ornish says. “I was profoundly depressed in college years ago. Having survived it, I became interested in understanding what caused me to feel that way, and found that the different parts of what became my lifestyle program were enormously helpful in my life. Unfortunately, most physicians are not trained to help people use the experience of suffering as a doorway for change.”

The social stigmata associated with this organic ailment should not stop others from seeking and gaining a full recovery.

Dean Ornish’s Battle With Depression The Saturday Evening Post