Appreciating the little things in life can have a lasting impact on your health. Previous research has shown that feeling grateful is beneficial for physical health and emotional well-being. Now, a new study has found that those who experience more gratitude also have a lower risk of dying. According to experts, this is the first report to examine the effects of gratitude on longevity.
The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Studywhich included nearly 50,000 women ages 69 to 96 who completed a six-item gratitude questionnaire in 2016. By asking participants to rate how much they agreed with statements like “I have a lot in life to be grateful for” and “I am grateful to a wide variety of people,” the research team was able to determine the percentage of women who had the highest and lowest feelings of gratitude.
When researchers reviewed the data three years later, they found that women with the highest levels of gratitude had a 9 percent lower risk of death from any cause, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative conditions, according to the study published July 3 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
“Gratitude is powerful: powerful for happiness, powerful for managing at least mild depressive symptoms, powerful for improving health, powerful for protecting against premature death — and it’s something anyone can do,” says senior study author Tyler VanderWeele, who is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
During the three-year follow-up period of the study, there were 4,608 deaths among participants — 2,153 of those were among women who reported experiencing the lowest amount of gratitude, while 1,273 deaths were among women who were in the middle. There were 1,182 deaths among women who reported the highest amount of gratitude.
The study also found that those who reported feeling more gratitude were more likely to be slightly younger, have a partner, participate in social or religious groups, or have better overall health.
“I think things that are going well in a person’s life, whether it’s their health or their social relationships, will make them more grateful,” explains VanderWeele, who is also director of the Program on Human Flourishing, which aims to study and promote human well-being, and co-director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard.
For the longevity analysis, the researchers controlled the data set by comparing similar women who differed only in their gratitude scores, VanderWeele said. The scientists also controlled for factors such as psychological well-being, health problems and other demographics, including social and religious participation.
“It’s still quite significant — even after controlling for social connectedness and other aspects of psychological well-being and a range of baseline characteristics of health, money, income, and so on — you still find that those who are grateful versus those who are not have about a 10 percent reduction in mortality risk,” VanderWeele says. “These other things are important, but they don’t explain the full effect of gratitude.”
The authors noted in the study that participants were primarily older, white women in the United States, and future studies with a more representative sample would be needed to learn more about the effects of gratitude and longevity for other demographic groups.
How to practice gratitude?
“It’s not entirely surprising to me, given what we know about the health benefits of positive emotions more generally, that a person’s disposition toward gratitude can actually, even extend their life,” says Philip Watkins, a professor of psychology at Eastern Washington University and author of “Gratitude and the Good Life: Toward a Psychology of Appreciation.”
Research has found that gratitude benefits individuals’ happiness and flourishing, according to Watkins, who was not involved in the new study.
Being more grateful has been linked to improved physical health, such as strengthening the immune system, lowering blood pressure, and improving the heart. Those who are more grateful also tend to get better sleep and have higher self-esteem and lower levels of anxiety, stress, and depression.
While the new study looked at people who are naturally more grateful, there are ways to practice more gratitude in your daily life, says Emiliana Simon-Thomas, chief scientific officer of the Greater Good Science Center — a research institute that studies the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being — at the University of California, Berkeley.
“It’s really important for each individual to start from a place of their own comfort zone,” explains Simon-Thomas, who was not involved in the new study. “It’s unfair to demand gratitude from someone if they’re feeling particularly destitute. But it’s not unfair to point out some of the simple, easy, immediate factors that are actually a source of kindness.”
“Could it be [tão simples quanto] feeling the warm sun through a window on your shoulder — it’s just a matter of really noticing that there are things around you, even in difficult times,” he adds.
There are three strategies Simon-Thomas recommends for those who want to practice more gratitude. First, keep a gratitude journal where you can write down a few things you’re grateful for, “whether it’s a washing machine in your house, or electricity, or the opportunity to go on a camping trip with friends — the list goes on,” she says.
Another way to practice gratitude is by writing letters to others who have had a positive impact on your life; the sense of gratitude is even more pronounced when those letters are delivered to the other person, Simon-Thomas said.
A third way to feel more gratitude is to be more specific when saying thank you — when someone brings you a coffee to start your day, instead of just saying “Thank you,” try extending it to something like, “I really appreciate you bringing me a coffee today, I know you have a lot of other things to do… and I was able to get a lot done because you brought me a coffee,” suggests Simon-Thomas.
There’s no clear consensus on how often someone should practice gratitude, according to Simon-Thomas. She recommends experimenting with different methods to see what works best for you.
Practicing gratitude is not only essential for health and well-being, but it’s also important to try to be more grateful because it’s a good virtue and can positively affect your relationships, Watkins says.
Having more gratitude has also been linked to being more optimistic in general, and people who express higher levels of gratitude tend to look for the bright side of life more, he adds.
“Research shows that we have a lot more good things happening to us than bad things, but we focus so easily on the bad things,” Watkins says. “I think that’s one of the reasons why gratitude… and being a grateful person is so important, because it helps us have a more balanced outlook on life.”
Source: CNN Brasil
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