It's that time of year when it's customary to be a little kinder and do nice things for others. Well, here's something interesting: Research suggests that when we make acts of kindness a habit, it's also good for our health.
Whether it's volunteering at a local food bank, or taking soup to a sick neighbor, there's lots of evidence that when we help others, it can boost our own happiness and psychological well-being. But there's also growing research that it boosts our physical health too, says Tara Gruenewald, a social and health psychologist at Chapman University.
Most of the evidence comes from observational studies of people who volunteer regularly. But there is also experimental evidence. Perhaps the most striking comes from the Baltimore Experience Corps trial, a large experiment in which adults age 60 and older were randomly assigned to either volunteer at elementary schools or be put on a waiting list. The volunteers spent at least 15 hours a week tutoring underprivileged kids. After two years, the researchers found that the volunteers had measurable changes in their brain health.
"They didn't experience declines in memory and executive function like we saw in our control participants," says Gruenewald, who is one of the researchers involved in the trial. "And there were even changes in brain volume in areas of the brain that support these different cognitive processes," she says.
Volunteers were also more physically active, "which is important for maintaining both cognitive and physical health as folks age," she explains.
Other research has found that people who volunteer regularly have a lower risk of mortality and have better physical function as they age. "People are able to walk longer at older ages and have better balance and so forth," says Laura Kubzansky, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Kubzansky studies the interplay between physical and mental health. Her research has found that people who engage in more volunteering and charitable donations have lower levels of physical pain.
She says researchers still don't know the exact mechanisms by which volunteering and acts of kindness improve people's health, but it is likely that multiple processes are at play.
For example, stress causes a cascade of reactions in your body that can drive up blood pressure and ultimately lead to higher cholesterol levels and other changes that raise the risk of cardiovascular disease and other poor health outcomes. She says volunteering may help buffer that stress response.
"Volunteering or doing an act of kindness can distract you from some of the problems that you might be having, so you might be a little bit less reactive yourself," Kubzansky says. And "it may help to give you more perspective on what your own problems are."
And when you go out to help others, it also makes you more physically active and less lonely. Social isolation is a known risk factor for physical and mental health problems, especially as we age.
"We know that better mental health is associated with better physical health," she says.
Most of the research in this field has looked at middle-age and older adults. There's less evidence on the health benefits of helping behaviors when it comes to younger people, says Julia Boehm, an associate professor of psychology at Chapman University who studies the social and psychological factors that influence health in kids and adolescents.
But one study that really stands out involved high schoolers who were randomly assigned to volunteer for 10 weeks with elementary school kids. Compared to students in the trial who were put on a waitlist, the teen volunteers had improvements in several markers of cardiovascular health.
"Those students who were engaged in volunteering activities with younger students showed healthier body mass index, healthier inflammatory markers and healthier total cholesterol," Boehm says. And the students who increased the most in empathy and altruistic behaviors, and who decreased the most in negative mood, also showed the greatest decreases in cardiovascular risk over time.
Other research in adults has also linked regular participation in both volunteering and more informal acts of kindness — such as helping out a neighbor — to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease.
Given the findings so far, Kubzansky says she'd like to see health officials make research into the health benefits of volunteering and other acts of kindness a public health priority.
In the meantime, Gruenewald says we really can't go wrong when we engage in behaviors that aim to help others.
"At the very least, it will make the world a little bit better place for many others. And we might just make it a little bit better for ourselves," she says.
Edited by Jane Greenhalgh
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