Appreciating the little things in life can leave a lasting impact on your health.
Experiencing gratitude is beneficial for physical health and emotional well-being, past research has shown. Now, a new study has found those who experience more gratitude also have a lower risk of dying. The report is the first to examine the effects of gratefulness on longevity, experts say.
The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study, which included nearly 50,000 women between ages 69 and 96 who completed a six-item gratitude questionnaire in 2016. By asking participants to rank how strongly they agreed with statements such as “I have so much in life to be thankful 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 the researchers reviewed the data three years later, they found the women who had the highest levels of gratitude experienced a 9% lower risk of death of any cause, including cardiovascular disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disease, according to the study published July 3 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
“Gratitude is powerful: powerful for happiness, powerful for addressing at least more minor depressive symptoms, powerful for improving health, powerful for protecting against premature death — and it is something that anyone can do,” said senior study author Dr. 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 years of follow-up in the study, there were 4,608 deaths among participants — 2,153 of those were women who reported experiencing the lowest amount of gratitude, while 1,273 deaths were of women who were in the middle tier. There were 1,182 deaths among women who reported the highest amount of gratitude.
The study also found those who reported feeling more gratitude were more likely to be slightly younger, have a partner, participate in social or religious groups, or have overall better health.
“I think things that are going well in life, whether that’s one’s health or one’s social relationships, (it’s) going to make one more grateful,” said VanderWeele, who is also director of the Human Flourishing Program, which aims to study and promote human well-being, and codirector of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion at Harvard.
For the analysis of longevity, researchers controlled the data group by comparing similar women who only differed in their gratitude scores, VanderWeele said. The researchers controlled for factors such as psychological well-being, health issues and other demographics including social and religious participation.
“It’s still quite meaningful — even after controlling for social connectedness and other aspects of psychological well-being and a host of baseline health characteristics and money and income and so on — you’re still finding those who are grateful versus those who are not with about a 10% reduced mortality risk,” VanderWeele said. “Those other things are important, but it doesn’t explain away the whole of the effect of gratitude.”
The authors noted in the study that the participants were mostly White, older women in the United States, and future studies with a more representative sample would be needed to find out more on the effects of gratitude and longevity for other demographics.
How to practice gratitude
“It’s not completely surprising to me, just given what we know on the health benefits of positive emotions more generally, that a person’s disposition for gratitude might actually even lengthen their life,” said Dr. Philip Watkins, a professor of psychology at Eastern Washington University and author of the book “Gratitude and the Good Life: Toward a Psychology of Appreciation.”
Research has found that gratitude benefits individuals’ happiness and flourishing, added Watkins, who was not involved with the new study.
Having more gratitude has been linked to improving physical health, such as strengthening the immune system, lowering blood pressure and benefiting the heart. Those who are more grateful also tend to get a better night’s sleep and have increased and lower anxiety, stress and depression levels.
While the new study looked at people who are naturally more grateful, there are ways to practice having more gratitude on a day-to-day basis, said Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director 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 so important for each individual to start from a place of their own comfort zone,” said Simon-Thomas, who was not involved with the new study. “It is unfair to demand gratitude from anyone if they’re feeling particularly impoverished. But it’s not unfair to point out some of the simple and easy immediate factors that are actually a source of goodness.
“It could be (as simple as) the feeling of warm sun through a window on your shoulder — it’s just a matter of really noticing that there are things around you even in moments that are difficult,” she added.
There are three strategies Simon-Thomas recommends for those looking to implement more feelings of gratitude. First, keep a gratitude journal where you can write a few things you are grateful for, “whether it’s a washing machine in your home, or electric light, or the opportunity to go on a camping trip with friends — the list could go on.”
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 giving out thanks — when someone gets you a coffee to start your day, instead of just saying, “Thank you,” try to extend it to something like, “I really appreciate that you brought me a coffee today, I know you have a lot of other things to do … and I got a lot of stuff done, because you brought me back coffee,” Simon-Thomas said.
There’s no clear consensus on how often one should practice gratitude, Simon-Thomas said. She recommends trying out different methods for what feels right to you.
Practicing gratitude is not only key for health and well-being, but it is also important to try to be more grateful because it is a good virtue and can positively affect your relationships, too, Watkins said.
Having more gratitude has also been linked to being more optimistic in general, and people who express higher levels of gratitude tend to look more for the good in life, Watkins added.
“Research shows we have a lot more good stuff happen to us than bad stuff, but we very easily focus on the bad stuff,” Watkins said. “I think that’s one of the reasons gratitude … and being a grateful person is so important is because they help us have a more balanced view of life.”
