All week long, we've been talking about the power of gratitude -- and today, we'll focus on the health benefits of gratitude.
"Gratitude helps you to grow and expand; gratitude brings joy and laughter into your life and into the lives of all those around you." – Eileen Caddy
Even though we think of gratitude as an emotional state, it also enhances cognitive functioning and decision-making. Feeling grateful improves functioning in regions of the brain governing social bonds and our ability to read others.
Interestingly, gratitude has a broadening effect on how we think and how we look at the world. Here are three ways gratitude can benefit our minds:
Stress and Pain Relief
The neural networks that light up when we socialize and experience pleasure are also activated when we're feeling grateful. These regions also regulate heart rate and arousal levels and are associated with stress relief and pain reduction. Feelings of gratitude create a more relaxed body state, thus also reducing stress.
Improve Health Over Time
Because gratitude relies on the brain networks associated with social bonding and stress relief, grateful feelings lead to health benefits over time.
Reduce Depression
The mental practice of gratitude may even be able to change and rewire the brain. Some evidence suggests that gratitude may induce structural changes in the very same parts of the brain that are impacted by depression.
For further reading on the topic, check out:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811915011532
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00868/full
I hope this helps. Keep growing in your discipline of gratitude.
Bill
