A certain amount of stress and worry is inevitable in everyone’s life. Coping with stresses and maintaining a healthy outlook leads to emotional stability. When stress and worry lead to excessive negative thinking, it’s called neuroticism. How you deal with stress and worry and whether or not you allow your negative thinking to take over and increase can have an effect on your health.

In a study that followed 1600 men over 12 years, it was found that those whose neuroticism increased with age were much more likely to become more stressed and their risk of dying from cancer and heart disease increased.

However, the study also showed that even if you are naturally fretful, learning to relax and control negative thinking can reverse this risk and give you a survival rate similar to that of an emotionally stable individual.

Study links propensity toward worry to early death