Count Your Blessings & Practice Gratitude. You Might Live Longer!

gratitude longevity hand written journal page

Photo: Priscilla Du Preez, Unsplash

Mind-Over-Matter Shows Promise Yet Again!:

Unless you’re a member of The “Woo-Woo” Club, things like mindset may simply not occur to you for health; until somebody mentions it.

How many of us were a bit too unfairly-dismissive when Grandma said something like, “Count your blessings.”?

That’s not health & wellness, right?

H&W is all about yoga mats, AG1, gym-memberships, and Bryan Johnson-sized supplement bills!!!

At least the Mindfulness-Meditation crowd would push back a little bit; though not as forcefully as a meth-toothed practitioner of CrossFit.

But it’s starting to seem like even the overlooked corners of your mentality could be the small change that creates a big difference…

The Short Answer:

Lots of things are easy to overlook concerning your health.
Hydration and mindset are two things that sit in most people’s blind-spots.
Small changes can make big differences.
Meditation can switch-off the brain’s “default mode network” and influence the expression of about 2200 genes.
A Harvard team looked into the mindset component of Gratitude over 3 years and ~50,000 subjects aged about 79.
Those in the highest 1/3 of Gratitude expression had a 9% reduced risk of all-cause early-mortality.
This included some of the top disease risks, and was controlled for many factors like health history, religion, and Optimism.
The results may be down to greater & better social connections and lower stress.
Other work on Gratitude did show lower blood-pressure and pulse in subjects.
High-quality social networks have been a factor associated with living to 100 before.
Other studies have shown 1)Reduced Depression, 2)Better Self-Care, and 3)Higher Long-Term Happiness among other benefits.
Perhaps Gratitude can also be seen as both high self-esteem and also strengthening social bonds as well.
You can easily bring more Gratitude (and maybe longevity) into your life with things like the “Three Good Things” exercise.
Strangely-enough, that dovetails well with something called, “The Winner Effect”.

Read on to find out the details…

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One Connection Is The Ancient Magic Of Meditation:

To their credit, the Meditation crowd has been all-over this for at least the past 2,500 years.

And their practice of mindfulness has been shown to largely switch-off the “default mode network” of the brain in ways that are small but similar to what psychedelics dol

Also recently, it’s been shown to change the expression of 1500-2200 genes.

So you’d either have to have been in that crowd, or the eastern phi/self-help space to think these mindset-shifts could bear fruit.

A Harvard Team Pulls Out The Data On Gratitude’s Boost:

That is until a Harvard team stepped-up and investigated one of those core tenets: Gratitude.

So they did a 3-year study of almost 50,000 subjects, with an average age of 79.

This group was all older nurses from the US, who filled out a questionnaire and were revisited later.

The results showed a 9% lower rate of all-cause early-mortality for those in the highest-third of Gratitude levels.

These included things like neurological disease, heart disease. The Big C, infections, injuries, and respiratory disease.

What’s more impressive is the results were controlled for all kinds of things like health history, religious participation, lifestyle, and even levels of Optimism.

What Are Some Ways This Could Work?

So what could be going on here?

Two things immediately spring to mind:

1) People higher in gratitude may have more & better social connections
1a) We know from the How To Live To 100 post that high-quality social networks are one of the keys
2) People higher in gratitude are likely to have less stress; or may deal with it better
2a) Stress has previously been shown to shorten lifespan.

Previous Studies Strengthen The Case For Gratitude’s Longevity Boost:

What does the previous research have to add to this?

One study that looked at several populations around the world found Gratitude-practicers had:

1) Lower pulse rates
2) Lower blood pressure
2a) Both of which could indicate lower stress
3) Awareness of more positive events through the day
4) Greater awareness of kindnesses across people

Other work before that suggests even more benefits like:
1) Reduced Depression
2) Better Self-Care
3) Increased Long-Term Happiness

Could Gratitude Be An Indicator Of Healthy Self-Esteem?:

So perhaps the Stress angle is the easiest to see.

Although it might be harder to connect the dots with some of the other works, those studies found what they found.

And since good friends can tend to look after each other, perhaps the pointers they share can be valuable.

Maybe because Gratitude can be seen as an act of kindness, service, and also deliberate happiness in a way,

It can also be easy to see that it might result in better self-care and lower depression.

You Can Also Bring More Of It Into Your Life With Practice:

Because there might be some correlation between how you treat others and how you treat yourself.

Anyway, regardless of whatever specific magic it does, at least we know it’s there and it does great things.

For more info, check out the other entries on Gratitude that can help you bring it into your life.

These include things like The Three Good Things exercise which also dovetails nicely with “The Winner Effect”.

By the way, if we had to speculate on yet another benefit, you could probably make a fair bet that people who are more grateful are more successful, too!