According to the BBC, we are now living longer than ever before and while things like the Mediterranean diet are said to increase your life expectancy, a new study has found that there a practice which is entirely free could also be very beneficial.
A study conducted by Harvard University and the University of British Columbia asked the following question: “Do people who more frequently notice and feel grateful for positive experiences tend to live longer?”
It may sound a little too simple. Just feel grateful as often as possible and you may extend your life expectancy? Surely not?
Well, 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.
They asked 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”.
From there, the researchers were able to determine the percentage of women who had the highest and lowest feelings of gratitude.
When the team then 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.
How to practice gratitude
The mental health experts at Mind recommend these steps for practicing gratitude in your everyday life:
- Write down the things that you are grateful for every day
- Express gratitude to loved ones whenever possible
- Try gratitude meditation
- Volunteer, donate to a cause you believe in or perform acts of kindness
- Set daily remindrs on your phone to pause and reflect on what you’re grateful for
- Go for a walk and notice the beauty around you
- Say “thank you” more often
- Consider the difficulties you’ve experienced and how they’ve helped you grow
- Visualise the things that you are grateful for
Of course, gratitude can’t undo structural inequalities
While gratitude is definitely a healthy practice to undertake, it can’t undo the structural difficulties many of us face.
While it may not be news to anybody that wealthy people tend to live longer, it’s worth noting that just in England, the deprivation divide means that people in the more affluent south have longer life expectancies on average and with more years in good health than those living in the more deprived northern regions.
The King’s Fund said: “Meaningful long-term gains in reducing health inequalities and improving population health and the UK’s life expectancy relative to comparator countries have never been more urgent and yet also more challenging.”