Is Happiness the Right Pair of Genes?

I'm currently enjoying chortling my way through Helen Russell's witty exposé of her relocation from UK to Denmark's Jutland ('Sticksville-on-Sea'). The title "The Year of Living Danishly" says it all. Her intentional pun on "Dangerously" immediately caught my attention, since I retain an interest in all things Indonesian, and the movie, which her book title aims to wordplay, and which features Mel Gibson, Linda Hunt and Sigourney Weaver, happens to be one of my favourites. 

Helen Russell (a freelance journalist) looks, often hilariously, to uncover the predominant reasons why, as she contends, Denmark is the happiest place on earth. In the process she explores her new surroundings, interacts in day to day activities with her neighbours, and interviews a number of her chosen Danish 'experts', including but not limited to the following (note the comments in parenthesis are mine, so don't blame Helen): 

• a 'happiness economist' (I guess happiness comes at a price?); 
• a 'cultural integration coach' (who's doubtless required to have a strong background in calculus); 
• the director of the Design Museum Denmark (happiness is a comfy sofa); 
• an interior designer (50 shades of grey?);
• a workplace happiness expert (Carlsberg solves everything);
• a sociologist and leading authority on Danish leisure (despite his age loves leisurely strolling, but is not meanderthal);
• the deputy head of Jutland's language centre (maintains that a double positive can't form a negative ... yeah, right!);
• the Minister for Gender Equality, and also for Churches (nothing left to talk about after politics, sex and religion);
• a divorce lawyer (half of all Danish marriages end in divorce - and then there's the unhappy ones);
• the owner of Denmark's 'premier' swingers club (starts off with a song, but there's a key change involved); 
• a parenting expert and mother of seven (yes seven!); 
• a Department of Education university researcher (called the subject of Helen's book 'average' - how mean) ; 
• a longstanding producer of cultural television programmes (square eyes for the Dane guys?); 
• a famous 'foodie' and double Michelin star chef, who formerly worked for the Danish royal family (who was doubtless used to a right royal bun fight?); 
• a culinary researcher (eventually got published - it's about thyme); 
• a celebrity chef (didn't get much info here - could wok the wok but not talk the talk); 
• a Danish pastry expert (turns out to be a piece of cake); and 
• the Director of Denmark's e-health database (the records indicate that 9 out of 10 injections are in vein).

But it's her interview with Niels Tummerup, of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen, that captures my imagination, when he suggests that there's something in the genes that helps Danes to be so content. After contending that the insular nature of Denmark's relatively homogeneous population is one major contributor to their happiness, resulting in their trusting each other, "because we're closely genetically related - like family," he goes on to mention the 'happy gene', called 5-HTT, or the 'serotonin-transporter gene'. Although this is only sketchily outlined in the book, further reference to my expert of choice, Dr Google, reveals (in New Scientist 2011) that indeed there are two copies of this gene, a long version and a short version, and it is the long variant that reportedly "makes a transporter molecule for serotonin," and that this variant, "helps to recycle serotonin faster and more efficiently than the short one." 

Tummerup further maintains that Danes have an abundance of this long form gene, reportedly "scoring in the top percentage in the world along with Holland."

Of course, before taking the Ancestry DNA test and exploring if you have any Viking heritage in your family tree, De Neve and others, in the above New Scientist reference (along with a modicum of common sense), suggest that our happiness is not just down to genetics (although a gene-based optimistic disposition might help) but also cultural and environmental influences, such as losing our job or close relatives.  

Nevertheless, Tummerup, maintains that it's difficult to separate genetics from cultural factors and that the presence of the long gene will provide the bearer with an approximately 50% chance of being happy, 'Danish-style'.  I'll leave it up to you to determine whether or not his being a geneticist makes him predisposed to any bias.

The question of whether or not the 5-HTT gene, and in particular its long variant, gives us a dominant predisposition to happiness is beyond this mere engineer to determine, or even to form a coherent and sustainable argument. I shall therefore leave you with a layman's light-hearted proposition:

If you're happy just like every Dane, 
And your pleasure you wish to maintain, 
A long gene, named 5-HTT, 
Will help you, ask Niels, he'll agree.
Should your 5-HTT form be short,  
Or not ample, then I must exhort, 
Think positive, don't be a tool,
Your drink ain't half gone, it's half full.This poem was composed by yours truly. Please don't moan and groan too unduly. 😂

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http://ken-boddie.squarespace.com

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.