Simple Daily Practice Might Be the Real Fountain of Youth
A real fountain of youth. Each month, I send a handwritten letter to someone for whom I am grateful.
One month later, I sent a letter to a mentor who was instrumental in my success.
The next was to someone who simply listened when I needed an ear.
Gratefulness and Longer Life
Now comes this news:
A recent study shows that appreciating the little things in life can impact your health.
Promoting healthy aging is a priority for me.
Today, I want to show you how the experience of grateful affect is inversely associated with all-cause and cause-specific mortality.
Background: Gratefulness and Longevity
Previous research suggests that gratitude is connected to being healthier and happier.
Studies have shown that more grateful people have better mental health, less depression, stronger relationships, healthier bodies, and better sleep.
However, many of these studies could have been more extensive in their design or scope, focusing on short-term changes or smaller groups of people.
There’s also been less research on how gratitude directly impacts physical health, especially long-term, and whether it could affect how long people live.
New Study Examining Gratefulness and Health
While I am not looking for any personal benefit when I pen my monthly letters, I recently stumbled across a study showing how practicing gratitude translates to better health.
Researchers analyzed information from the Nurses’ Health Study, a large group of almost 50,000 women between 69 and 96 years old.
In 2016, these women answered a questionnaire about how grateful they felt.
The questionnaire asked them to rate how much they agreed with statements like “I have a lot to be thankful for” and “I’m grateful to many different people.”
This approach helped the researchers determine which women felt most or less grateful.
A Real Fountain of Youth: Study Results
Out of the nearly 50,000 women in the study (average age 79), about 4,600 passed away during the follow-up period.
The researchers found a clear trend:
The more grateful the women were at the start of the study, the lower their risk of dying from any cause.
For example, women who were in the top third for feeling grateful had a 9% lower risk of death compared to the women in the bottom third.
The findings held even after accounting for factors like age, health, lifestyle, and mental state.
Specifically, more grateful women also had a 15 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease.
My Take – A Real Fountain of Youth
This study is the first to show real-world evidence suggesting that feeling grateful might help older adults live longer.
However, it’s important to note that this study focused on a specific group of women (mainly older white women living in the United States), so we need to do more research with different groups of people to confirm these results.
To better understand how gratitude might affect the lifespan of other groups of people — different ages, races, genders, and from different parts of the world — we need to do more research with a more diverse group of participants.
I will keep writing my monthly letters, now aware that I may derive health benefits from my posture of gratitude.
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