Gratitude: The Natural Anti-Inflammatory

This past weekend was Thanksgiving in Canada. It’s my favourite celebration of the year. The only thing we need to do is feel gratitude … for family, friends, food and the beautiful autumn colours. 

Thanksgiving may be over but it’s in the interest of your health and well-being to keep the gratitude going. 

When we are in a state of gratitude, our subjective well-being is positive.  We feel happy. Not only that, we also are more likely to engage in positive health behaviours. 

A 2019 study published in Applied Psychology of 2.5 million Americans found that subjective well-being affects our health behaviour.

It isn’t clear from the study how greater well‐being might lead to better health, or what the mechanisms are for these effects. Several mechanisms have been proposed, including both direct biological pathways and indirect behavioural pathways, and the effects are likely a combination of both these mechanisms. 

The effects of gratitude and happiness on health are produced at least in part because happy people engage in more health behaviours, such as being more physically active, taking preventative action to lower health risks, and avoiding risky behaviours. 

When you feel gratitude you feel positive about life, your biology responds positively and you are more likely to engage in positive behaviours.

Lots of good there!

How our biology responds to thoughts is quite interesting.  The word ‘coherence” sums it up nicely.  

When we have positive thoughts of gratitude, happiness, and joy we have positive emotions.  Emotions create vibrations in our body.  The heart beats more coherently, the brain and heart become coherent with each other, the autonomic nervous system that runs our body becomes more coherent and in turn our biology becomes more coherent and operating efficiently.  When we operate more efficiently we have more energy, we think better, we make better decisions and all our systems ... digestion, circulation, immune, endocrine, reproductive, … all of these systems work better. 

WE feel better!

How can you feel more gratitude?  Here are a few ideas: 

• Start your day with gratitude by thinking about three things you are grateful for as soon as you wake up.  This sets the tone for the day. 

• Finish your day with gratitude by thinking about three things that happened during the day that you are grateful for. Do this right after your turn out the light and it will help calm you before sleep. 

• Feel gratitude for your food before you eat.  Think about all the people who had a part in getting our food to the table.  

• Stay in the present moment and appreciate what you feel, see, hear, taste, or smell around you. Maybe it’s the way sunlight casts a shadow of trees, or the water hitting your face as you shower, the aroma of food cooking, the crackle of wood on a fireplace, or the sound of birds.  Just notice and appreciate what’s around you. 

• Ponder the miracle of your physical body.  You don’t even have to think about beating your own heart, or digesting your food, or even breathing.  We are each a miracle!

• Keep a gratitude journal.  You could use this to keep a running list of things you are grateful for, or use it to record three gratitudes in the morning and evening.  

When you begin to pay attention it’s easy to find things to be grateful for.  Gratitude is the natural anti-inflammatory.

What are you grateful for today?

A great way to help improve your health is choosing to create peace and calm while you are eating.  HOW you eat can be as important as WHAT you eat.  I have a great resource for you to implement TODAY to help you become empowered in your health.  Click on the image below to receive it.