Giving and generosity can improve your wellness!
While wellness and longevity discussions typically center on self-focused approaches (nutrition, sleep, exercise, etc.), multiple studies have now demonstrated that giving to others, and being generous, can actually improve your wellbeing! Let’s briefly explore the key findings:
A very interesting article published in the journal Emotion found that participants who performed three acts of kindness each week for just two weeks experienced significant decreases in depression, anxiety, and loneliness!
An article published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine found that giving more to family and friends, as well as volunteering for various causes, decreased levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is a marker of systemic inflammation in the body. IL-6 is released by a large number of cells in the body (both immune and non-immune cells) in response to stress, injury, and infection. The authors of the article conclude that, “… giving more support is associated with better physical health.” A similar finding in the journal Innovation in Aging found that participants who engaged in volunteer work demonstrated lower salivary cortisol levels. Cortisol is also a stress hormone— you can read the details about the impact of this hormone on our health in my book Optimized.
Another excellent discovery was an article published in the journal Psychophysiology that found individuals engaging in prosocial behavior following a stressor helps to downregulate physiological stress responses. Specifically, the researchers found that participants who provided a gift to another person experienced significantly greater downregulation of their heart rate, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure while recovering from the stressor! You may be wondering what type of “stressor” the researchers used— for those interested you may want to explore the “Trier Social Stress Test”, a standardized tool for investigating psychobiological stress responses in a laboratory setting!
In addition to your other wellness goals for the week, don’t forget to engage in some giving and generosity to others, and consider volunteering your time to help those in need— an opportunity to enhance the wellbeing of everyone involved! As I write this, I think I can feel my IL-6 levels decreasing, and it sure feels good!!
