Did you know that freedom is not only better for your wealth, it's also better for your health?

According to a new study published in the British Medical Journal, life expectancy is significantly longer and infant and maternal deaths are much lower in democratic countries when compared to repressive regimes.

A team of Spanish researchers at the Universidad de Alicante compared the health statistics of 170 countries, representing 98% of the world's population. After adjusting for national wealth, population and inequality levels, researchers found free enterprise countries to be the healthiest and totalitarian countries the least healthy.

The researchers based each country's relative freedom status on published rankings done by Freedom House, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. 45% of the countries were rated as free, 32% were partially free and 24% were not free.

The researchers suggest that the reasons for the democracy-health correlation may be because democracies typically allow more social networking, empowerment op

For both our health and wealth this freedom of information (and expression) is essential. But, as far as each individual's results are concerned, success is based on how well you evaluate and use the wealth of information that's available.

So, it's up to each of us. Because we live in a great free society, we all have the opportunity to be happier, healthier and wealthier. All we have to do is put our minds to the task, be persistent and work smart.