Understanding Gratitude and Health

The connection between the heart, health, and happiness is one of the most important factors in up-leveling your well-being. While we often think about what we are eating and how we are exercising, research indicates that we must also pay close attention to the state of our happiness. This article will explore how gratitude and connection are interrelated to our joy and well-being.

The Importance of Social Connection

The recent pandemic has shown that isolation can be one of the greatest predictors of poor health and conversely our community helps to build our immunity. In fact, beyond our immediate family and social circle, one of the things we missed during the pandemic was the encounters through day-to-day life. In one research article, Vitamin S: Why Is Social Contact, Even With Strangers, So Important to Well-Being?, the authors consider the importance of close and even distant relationships:

“Social contact is associated with positive psychological and health outcomes. Although this conclusion was reached several years before the COVID-19 pandemic, this crisis is a reminder of a very robust finding: Social contact is associated with happiness and serves as a buffer to the stress that one is bound to face in life (e.g., Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010, 2015). Indeed, one of the major stressors during lockdowns due to the pandemic has been the lack of social contact (Veer et al., 2020). Several authors have discussed why ongoing relationships, especially well-functioning ones in which people feel secure (e.g., appreciated, cared for, and respected), are associated with psychological and physical health (e.g., Algoe, 2019; Reis et al., 2017).

But is there also merit to relationships that are not close, such as contact with acquaintances or even strangers on the street or at a bus stop? We propose that even interactions with strangers may promote well-being. Specifically, using insights derived from research on social interaction along with principles of interdependence, we argue that there are three broad reasons, which we frame as propositions, why people need social contact with strangers. It is because they need Vitamin Social Contact, or Vitamin S.”

How Ancient Cultures Cultivated Happiness with Gratitude:

While having dinner with my friend Tiffany the other night, discussing our Cooking for Fertility DVD, I mentioned I was working on an article about the connection between heartfelt happiness and health. She shared with me that in ancient cultures before shamans would perform healings they would ask their patients to list ten things that they were grateful for. They believed that this simple act of expressing gratitude was often enough intervention to cure what ailed their patients.

Research is confirming this may just be true. A Canadian study revealed that looking for the silver lining throughout life and adopting a positive attitude may lower the risk of heart attacks and Angina. Furthermore, perhaps we can shift our experience of sorrow to joy simply by including pleasurable activities in our lives.

Pleasure, Gratitude and the Nervous System:

Pleasurable thoughts and experiences change our physiology by flooding the body with feel-good chemicals like serotonin and beta-endorphins. Alongside hormones, a chemical called nitric oxide is also released, most commonly in the experience of orgasm. Nitric oxide relaxes the blood vessels inducing the relaxation response, which supports the parasympathetic nervous system and combats stress.

Many of us did experience a state of fight or flight during the pandemic. Not only were we isolated but our sense of safety was threatened, having us on the constant lookout to avoid getting sick or worse. In this isolation many people sought small sources of pleasure in connecting through technology, checking in on neighbors, and remembering hobbies that reignited simple pleasures.

The Science of the Pleasure Diet:

Dr. Deborah Kern, a health scientist who specializes in the impacts of pleasure conducted a study where women were enrolled in a Pleasure Diet and encouraged to seek pleasure on a daily basis through all five senses. Kern looked at 22 areas of life satisfaction and noted significant increases in life happiness in all areas.

Lifestyle and nutrition tips to support heart health and happiness:

Meditate on gratitude:

Focus on an image that brings you joy and you will begin to resonate with a higher vibration. The Institute of Heartmath uses technology to measure this shift from dissonance (stress) to resonance (pleasure) using technology.

Keep a gratitude list:

Shaman healers have long recognized what you are grateful for can immediately shift your state of mind. Consider keeping a list beside your bed.

Explore your five senses:

Pay attention to the sensations of pleasure you experience when you taste, touch, smell, see, and hear. Notice how different images and feelings impact your state of happiness.

Heart Healthy Foods:

In Chinese medicine red colored foods positively impact the heart: beets, tomatoes, red peppers, raspberries, and adzuki beans. The following foods also help to build the blood: apricot, beef, beetroot, blackberries, bone marrow, eggs, cuttlefish, dark leafy greens, date, dandelion, fig, grape, kidney bean, liver, hormone-free meat and liver, microalgae, nettle, octopus, oyster, parsley, sardine, spinach, spirulina, sweet rice, and watercress.

Supplements for Heart (Cardiovascular) Health:

OPC and Fish Oil

Exercise:

Daily exercise floods the body with fresh oxygen and blood supply. Find activities you love and incorporate them into your routine. Whether you are exercising for pregnancy or for fertility, pleasure is a key component to keep you on track.

Regardless of how you connect to pleasure in your day-to-day life, happiness is an important foundation of well-being. Taking time for gratitude and reflection in the hustle of day-to-day can bring meaning to our lives. Connection with like-minded friends and strangers alike are the building blocks to combatting life’s stressors.