Turns out, being happy could add years to your life. New scientific findings reveal that seniors who say they are happy have a 35 percent lower risk of dying over a five-year period than unhappy people.

Published online on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers gauged the happiness levels of more than 3,800 people ages 52 to 79 by monitoring their feelings four times over the course of a day.