Study Shows Gratitude Improves Heart Health: 30 Days Of Gratitude

ACROSS AMERICA — Your gratitude muscle is connected to your heart muscle, and the more you practice the former, the healthier the latter will be.

That’s not just warm and fuzzy hyperbole. Research backs it up.

A review of studies on gratitude published in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that heart disease produces an “immense health and economic burden” in the United States and globally, but practicing gratitude can be “a low-cost intervention.”

The state-of-the-science review looked at 13 studies, culled from a pool of 234, that linked gratitude to good cardiovascular health.

Patch explores the intentionality of gratitude in "30 Days Of Gratitude." Come back to Across America Patch every day through November and read more about gratitude.

Living with gratitude is more than saying "thank you." For some, it's as simple as making a deliberate choice, "an affirmation of goodness" in the world, according to Robert Emmons, a University of California, Davis, psychology professor known as the "father of gratitude."

Experts say that practicing gratitude isn't pretending bad things didn't happen but, rather, savoring the goodness in our lives and understanding that being grateful begets more goodness.

Clinical trials have shown the practice of gratitude can have multiple health benefits, including:

• Lower blood pressure.
• Improved sleep function.
• Higher levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and lower levels of bad cholesterol (LDL).
• Fewer symptoms of depression.
• Less fatigue.
• Higher levels of heart rate variability (a marker of cardiac health).

Emmons said in a UC-Davis news release that weaving the practice of gratitude into daily routines “can take some work at first” but that the commitment is worthwhile.

“It is essential to remember that gratitude is a choice, not an emotion,” he said.

Emmons suggests three ways to get started:

1. Every day, record a few things you’re grateful or thankful for — even something as simple as taking a hot bath or walking the dog — in a gratitude journal. One study showed health care workers who followed the routine for two weeks felt less stress and depression, the release said.
2. Focus on your words. “Grateful people use the language of gifts, givers, blessings, fortune and abundance, while ungrateful people tend to focus on deprivation, regrets, need or scarcity,” Emmons said in the news release.
3. Remind yourself that gratitude is the ability to feel grateful no matter what is happening. “I think the biggest obstacle is that most of us, most of the time, reduce gratitude to a reaction to circumstances,” Emmons said. “We reduce it to feeling good after something good happens, but this is false. If that were true, then our gratitude would be totally conditional on what happens to us. Think of gratitude as a core aspect of resilience and helpful in times of crisis.”

Read More

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