There is a relationship between positive emotions such as happiness and living a healthy life. A large international study confirms this correlation for western world countries but not for eastern countries. For comparable age, gender, social economic and health conditions American and European adults, considered to be happy and satisfied with their life on the basis of replies given to a set of 10 questions, had normal values for cholesterol and other lipid values (parameters that are known to be related to a risk for cardiovascular disease in particular). Japanese adults who were happy on the basis of replies given in the questionnaire had no beneficial effect on the blood values examined. The explanation that the western and eastern world authors of the study give is that positive emotions are encouraged in the western world culture but not necessarily in that of the eastern world. The latter feel that these emotions are fleeting and a distraction from more important things. This conclusion says two things. The first is that the connection between positive emotions and health passes through culture and the second that this cultural mediation can be measured biologically. The aim now is to understand if certain emotional profiles are related to specific health conditions with the hope of drawing emotion-culture-health maps that may be used in schools, workplace and hospitals.