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Cut your sugar, get some exercise, stop smoking, eat your vegetables, take supplements, don’t stress, sleep well. Every day, we are bombarded with information about how to live longer, healthier, happier lives. But there is one crucial piece of health advice I bet you have never been given. It’s probably the most enjoyable health tip you could be told, but the data supporting it has – to date – remained a bizarrely well-kept secret: engage in the arts.

Over the past few decades, evidence has been accumulating to suggest that being more creative works wonders for our health. Programmes being developed around the world are starting to integrate the arts into healthcare, with astonishing results, from music in surgery reducing the amount of sedatives, opioids and anti-anxiety meds needed, to dance programmes helping people with Parkinson’s disease to walk.

But the arts aren’t just there for us when we are sick. Crafts, singing, theatre, dance, reading, writing and drawing are inherently good for us as part of our day-to-day lives, even if thoughts about our health are far from our minds. In my forthcoming book, Art Cure, I argue that they are a “health behaviour” akin to exercise, diet and sleep. Here’s why, and how, you should get more art into your life in 2026.

As an epidemiologist, I spend my days looking at data from cohort studies – massive datasets that contain thousands of individuals who have completed questionnaires, had nurse interviews, donated blood samples and undergone brain imaging every few years of their lives. Many of these studies in countries around the world contain buried questions on arts engagement. Using complex statistical methods, we can look at the long-term relationship between everyday arts engagement and dozens of health outcomes.

The results are remarkable. People who participate more frequently in the arts, watch artistic performances and visit cultural venues are happier and feel more satisfied with their lives over the years and decades that follow. Children who engage more with the arts have a reduced risk of developing problems like depression by the onset of adolescence. Among adults over the age of 50, those who regularly go to live music events, the theatre or museums and exhibitions have nearly half the risk of developing depression over the next few years.

You might be wondering if this isn’t about the arts at all. What if people who are creatively engaged are wealthier, healthier or also busy engaging in other health behaviours that might, in fact, be responsible for these effects? The statistics underpinning these analyses are sophisticated – we can not only take account of potential confounding factors like these, but also consider other factors like genetics, family environment and childhood experiences, and the results still hold.