I have always been fascinated by what makes us all happy. After all isn’t that one of the big brass ring’s in life we all strive for? If someone walked up to you and gave you a million dollars or 10 million dollars would that make you truly happy? I’m sure for a certain period of time the answer would be yes, but I’m talking about real happiness for the long run.

I have in fact met millionaires that are miserable and a few that do seem happy and satisfied. Yes, money can make us all happy and I don’t want to discard the big buck, but I’m talking long term deep down happiness and satisfaction with life and living. And that’s what interest’s me. Lets take a look at what the scientists have to say.

A study published online Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence on what makes us happy.

Researchers from Australia, the Netherlands and Germany scoured data from thousands of German adults who were tracked for a quarter-century, from 1984 to 2008. Each year, they answered questions about their families, their careers, their health, their social activities and their “life satisfaction.”

Based on all this data, the researchers concluded that these things (in no particular order) contribute to happiness:
• Having an emotionally stable spouse
• Prioritizing altruistic goals like “helping other people” and “being involved in social and political activities”
• Prioritizing family (and, for women, having a spouse who prioritizes family goals is an added bonus)
• Having an active social life
• Regular exercise

And these things detract from happiness:
• Having a neurotic spouse
• Prioritizing “success and material goods”
• Working much more or much less than you’d ideally like (though being unemployed or underemployed is worse than being overworked)
• For men, being underweight
• For women, being obese
Here’s how the researchers summed up their findings: “Results showing that long-term happiness can be substantially affected by individual choices are good news, not only for economists but also for governments and humankind.”

There you go. A quick snapshot of what makes us happy. What about you? What makes you happy? I would like to know.

An article I read last month by Jeannie Stein of the Los Angeles Times, describes some negative effects of watching TV. I have noticed myself that the more I find time for some form of exercise, the less time I have for watching television and it looks like that is a good thing.

Watching television for hour upon hour obviously isn’t the best way to spend leisure time. Inactivity has been linked to obesity and heart disease. But a new study quantifies TV viewing’s effect on risk of death.

Researchers found that each hour a day spent watching TV was linked with an 18% greater risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, an 11% greater risk of all causes of death, and a 9% increased risk of death from cancer.

As the article stated, researchers found a statistical relationship between long hours of TV viewing and a shortened life span, but the study did not go so far as to find a direct cause.

A journal of the American Heart Assn., looked at health data among 8,800 men and women older than 25 who were part of the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study. Participants recorded their television viewing hours for a week, and researchers separated the results by amount of viewing: those who watched less than two hours of TV a day, those who watched two to four hours a day, and those who watched more than four hours a day.

Researchers found a strong connection between TV hours and death from cardiovascular disease, not just among the overweight and obese, but among people who had a healthy weight and exercised.

“What we showed was that irrespective of a person’s exercise level, sitting for four or more hours watching television was linked to a significant increase in risk of death compared to watching lower amounts of TV,” said Dr. David Dunstan, lead author of the study and professor and head of the Physical Activity Laboratory at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia. “The message here is that in addition to promoting regular exercise, we also need to promote avoiding long periods of sitting, such as spending long hours in front of the computer screen.”

To him, the results weren’t unexpected. “When we’re in that sitting posture, we’re not using our muscles, and we know from extensive evidence that muscle contractions are important for the body’s regulatory processes, such as the ability to break down glucose and use it as energy.”

Dr. Prediman K. Shah, director of the cardiology division of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, agreed. He pointed out that muscles become deconditioned when not used, triggering harmful physiological changes. “If your activity is slowing down, you metabolize cholesterol less and synthesize it more,” he said.

Even sporadic exercisers who sit for long periods need to increase their daily activity.

“The physical activity we do over a 24-hour period is important,” says Dr. Gerald F. Fletcher, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., and a spokesman for the American Heart Assn.

That means taking the stairs instead of the elevator, gardening, walking the dog . . .

“For couch potatoes, sitting on your duff is hazardous to your health,” Shah said. “The bottom line is keep moving.”