In this video, Dr. Seheult discusses the science behind the benefits of gratitude and how some of your bad thoughts could be killing you. MedCram wants to remind you that it has discussed nutrition, sleep, rest, exercise, air, water, sunlight, and avoiding toxins in its discussions on health optimization; however, one area that has not been discussed is mental thoughts as related to mental health. Dr. Seheult explores the question, does your mental approach to life affect your body, immune system and health?
Does gratitude help?
In an article from American Journal of Epidemiology, they discuss a prospective cohort study which evaluated optimism and all-cause mortality in women and found that a higher degree of optimism was associated with a lower mortality risk with up to a 30% reduction in all-cause mortality. However, it is important to remember that association does not mean causation and a randomized control trial is needed to better elucidate this. There was a randomized control trial done and published in 2016 in Psychotherapy Research. It evaluated whether gratitude writing could improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients. It consisted of 293 participants that were divided into three groups which included the control (psychotherapy only), psychotherapy and expressive writing about stress experiences, and psychotherapy and gratitude writing. This gratitude writing involved writing a letter to someone who the individual wanted to express gratitude for. They needed to do this once a week for three weeks but were not obligated to mail it. It was found at the 4 and 12 week follow ups, that the psychotherapy and gratitude writing group had significantly better mental health compared to the other two groups. In the gratitude writing group compared to the expressive writing group there were more positive emotions, less negative emotions and more “we” words used. The researchers determined that gratitude unshackles us from toxic emotions, gratitude helps even if you don’t share it, gratitude’s benefits take time, and gratitude has lasting effects on the brain.
Does depression, anxiety and PTSD have an effect on coronary artery disease?
There was another study published in the Journal of American College of Cardiology that was a meta-analysis and found that while depression consistently predicted excess risk of developing coronary heart disease, anxiety and PTSD also appeared to be at least as potent risk factors for coronary artery disease as depression. There was an additional study that also looked at the positive psychological well being and how that plays into health behaviors that can then affect cardiovascular health. This study noted that the difference between mindfulness interventions versus positive psychology interventions is that the latter aims at promoting optimism, gratitude and a positive effect directly through activities that help recall positive life events, use imagination and writing about a better future, identify and use personal strengths and plan and perform acts of kindness.
Is forgiveness a health pillar?
This may be one of our health pillars that our society isn’t talking about and that constraining thoughts to appropriate things may be a key to optimizing our health. Forgiveness leads to empathy and understanding but it is important to note that forgiveness is more than just “moving on,” it needs to happen internally, it is not a sign of weakness and it has been linked to reduced anxiety, depression, major psychiatric disorders, fewer physical health symptoms and lower mortality. Harboring resentment and feelings of anger has been shown to promote bad health and specifically poor cardiovascular health. In another article, researchers wanted to see how forgiveness, stress, and mental and physical health symptoms changed and related to one another over 5 weeks. They found that increases in forgiveness were associated with decreases in stress which in turn related to decreases in mental (but not physical) health symptoms. This was a study that provided prospective, longitudinal evidence that greater forgiveness is associated with less stress and as a result better mental health. Another older study done in the Journal of American College of Cardiology on the association of anger and hostility with future coronary heart disease (CHD) reviewed 44 studies and looked at the effect of anger and hostility on CHD in a healthy vs disease population. They found that in both the healthy and disease population that anger and hostility was a risk factor for CHD. They noted that the harmful effect of anger and hostility on CHD in the healthy population was greater in men than women.
Is forgiveness a public health issue?
All of this led to an article in 2018 that discussed whether forgiveness is a public health issue. We are constantly exposed to social media, on television, elections, stock market to movements that have agendas and are designed to make you angry and hostile. Anger is a good motivating factor but how is that emotion affecting you? Individuals will spend a lot of time trying to do healthy behaviors such as get good nutrition, sleep, rest, exercise, fresh air, sunlight and avoid toxins but then these good factors may be negated by our negative thoughts of anger, resentfulness, ungratefulness, and stress. It is perhaps time to think about being grateful for what we do have.
LINKS / REFERENCES:
Does gratitude writing improve the mental health of psychotherapy clients? Evidence from a randomized controlled trial (Psychotherapy Research) | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/…
Gratitude Letter (Berkeley) | https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/gr…
How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain (Berkeley) | https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/arti…
Optimism and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study (American Journal of Epidemiology) | https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/…
Positive Psychological Well-Being and Cardiovascular Disease: JACC Health Promotion Series (NIH) | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…
Forgiveness, Stress, and Health: a 5-Week Dynamic Parallel Process Study (NIH) | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…
Is Forgiveness a Public Health Issue? (NIH) | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti…
The association of anger and hostility with future coronary heart disease: a meta-analytic review of prospective evidence (NIH) | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19281…
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