University Times

Hilary Tindle’s fascination with how outlook influences health and aging started when she was the lead author on a 2008 National Institutes of Health-funded study that looked at how optimism led to a healthier heart.

“What we found in about 100,000 women is that optimists were less likely to have a first heart attack compared to pessimists, and they were more likely to be living by the end of the study,” says Tindle, assistant professor of medicine and author of the book, “Up: How Positive Outlook Can Transform Our Health and Aging.” “Why would the way we look at the world matter for heart health and longevity?”

Her book, she says, aims to explain our current understanding of a positive outlook’s positive health effects, and “to call people to action. The optimistic thoughts are great. But they’re only great to the extent that they move us to positive action.”

If she had acted on her pessimism about the book, “I never would have written this,” she says. On the other hand, “if you’re sitting on the couch, being an optimist,” your optimism is not going to have as much of an effect on your health as real action, Tindle explains. Optimists, believing in a positive future, tend to create that positive future. In health, that means they tend to eat properly and exercise more often, for instance.

Tindle makes a distinction between people with the optimistic personality trait and Pollyannas who see everything in a rosy light — those with “optimistic bias.”

“Often people will tune out when they hear the word ‘optimism,’” she allows. “They think it’s baloney.”

However, she adds, “optimists show themselves to be realists.” Optimistic bias is denial of reality, while the optimistic personality trait is “the ability to see the positive side of things, to focus on the positive aspects of the situation. Everyone can find a shade or color that suits them. You don’t have to be a turbo-charged, happy, happy person.”

The research, she reports, shows that “optimists are less likely to become depressed or be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and they are more likely to recover, and to recover more quickly.

“Ultimately, the research I would like to do with my colleagues is to find ways to help people enhance some of their positive attitudes and to ditch the worry and the negative attitudes that ultimately hold them back.

“The events of our lives influence our personalities,” and vice versa, she explains. “The real question that everyone seems to want to know: Can we take people who are strongly pessimistic, neurotic — the Woody Allens and George Costanzas of the world,” and change them? “Those clinical trials have not been done” — although she is discussing with colleagues how they might conduct large studies to test that hypothesis.

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In “Up,” Tindle shows not only how optimism leads to positive health outcomes, but how it keeps us physically younger, and prematurely ages those with the opposite personality trait. She outlines how attitude affects us at the cellular level, in our organs and our appearances as well.

Positive outlook seems to lead to healthier outcomes; it isn’t continued health that makes us optimistic, Tindle demonstrates. Our attitudes start early and can affect our prospects for illnesses that begin to form at a young age, such as heart disease, as well as our early participation in bad behavior, such as fighting or smoking in grade school. Yet there is hope: While our positive or negative personality traits may be partly genetically linked, they can be modified for better health outcomes.

Such change is not easy, she admits. Her book posits “7 steps to attitudinal change” that begin with realizing that such change is possible, that small changes can make big health differences, and that it’s important to acknowledge your own small victories, rather than working toward a larger goal and seeming to fail if it isn’t reached quickly or directly enough.

The steps also include advice to follow your doctor’s recommendations, add more natural environments to your daily experience and seek the benefits of friends and family. The support of social networks —even the virtual kind — have been shown to be effective in helping people quit smoking.

Tindle also recommends having an outlook guide, someone whose life and attitude can serve as an example. In her book, she recalls learning an ultimate lesson in the optimistic outlook of a safari guide in Africa. The guide told her group not to run from a charging animal unless the guide instructed them to run. He was prepared to shoot any such creature, but he was also prepared to use the animal’s own instincts to keep both sides from harm.

When one lion did run at Tindle’s safari group, the guide told them to stand their ground. Some group members clung to one another; one had to be physically restrained. But the strategy worked. The lion, which would have seen a runner as prey, pulled up when the group did not move — and before getting close enough to be shot.

“I think I gained more confidence in that moment — I was so proud of myself for not running,” Tindle says. Such optimistic outlook guides — the ones with realistically positive lessons to teach — can be anywhere: “teachers, doctors, a really nice neighbor. For me, my plumber is a real outlook guide. He’s friendly; things get fixed. (Outlook guides) are so key. They really help right our boats.”

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“Up” lists a number of techniques to help us change our attitudes: cultivating mindfulness; practicing contemplation; consulting our inner adviser, and more. Tindle acknowledges that, while we do such things naturally when we mentally analyze where a situation has gone wrong, undertaking them to change deep personality traits takes a certain level of self-awareness that not every individual possesses. It is also tough to pinpoint what, for each of us, will necessarily move us from thought to action.

In her current clinical work on smoking cessation, Tindle finds that people still can change after decades of unhealthy attitudes and behavior: “The people who have smoked for 50 years will say, ‘I didn’t understand the relationship between smoking and the healing of my wound after surgery,’” and will finally see a reason to quit smoking.

But high pessimism — I’ll never, I won’t be able to, people don’t like me, no one will help me — “It’s short of depression but it’s still very serious,” she says. “Those attitudes steal what would have been a very happy and productive life.

“This is not inborn,” she concludes about our attitudes. Nor is it a pure or permanent product of our environment, since the link between socioeconomic status and personality is smaller than one would expect. “It’s likely that many genes contribute a small amount” to our personality, or about 25 percent, she says. “The rest we can create — with work.”

—Marty Levine