The Science and Benefits of Gratitude
In honor of Thanksgiving, this week, we look at the scientific effects of gratitude on the brain, and the ways incorporating gratitude into a daily practice can improve your quality of life.
What is Gratitude?
Around the Thanksgiving holiday, it is a common tradition to ask friends and family what they are grateful for. Gratitude, which is defined by the Cambridge Dictionary as “the feeling or quality of being grateful” or thankful, is often an emotion produced by reflecting on the good in one's life.
Someone may be grateful for a gift they received, luck they have had, the relationships they have formed or strengthened, and more.
The Science of Gratitude
Some researchers refer to gratitude as a natural antidepressant. When an individual expresses or feels gratitude, the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine are released. These neurotransmitters are associated with happiness and mood enhancement.
When starting a new daily gratitude practice, individuals encourage new neural pathways to develop, whose use will increase as gratitude practice continues. These small, scientific changes can lead to a range of benefits and improvements in overall quality of life.
Mental & Physical Benefits of Gratitude
In addition to reducing symptoms and feelings of depression, gratitude has also been found to reduce anxiety, worry, and negative thinking. Although more research needs to be done to prove the association, researchers believe that a gratitude practice could be good for heart health, as it positively affects biomarkers often associated with a risk for heart disease.
A study conducted by Dr. Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami and Dr. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California, Davis, showed that participants who reflected on what they were grateful for during the work were more likely to have a positive outlook. The other two groups in the study were either reflecting on the negatives of their week, or reflecting without a particular focus on the positive or negative of the week. Possibly unrelated, the gratitude group were also found to be more likely to exercise more during the week.
From a physical standpoint, increased gratitude on a daily basis can improve quality and amount of sleep per night, blood pressure, and cognitive functioning. On a psychological level, it can improve self-esteem, patience, and overall mental health.
Finally, gratitude has the ability to improve the quality of our relationships. Those on the receiving end of gratitude have been proven to be more likely to feel kindly, generous or helpful towards the person communicating it. Expressing gratitude to those around you can also cause a chain reaction, improving the mood or culture of your environment.
Ways to Add Gratitude to Your Day
There are many ways to start implementing gratitude in your daily life. Some individuals choose to journal. This entails ending each day, week, month, year, or other predetermined stretch of time by sitting down, reflecting on what you have to be grateful for, and writing down your thoughts. Gratitude can be expressed for small things, like a delicious meal you had, or something much larger, like a promotion or major life milestone.
A good way to express gratitude to others is writing thank you notes. This can be done by hand, or digitally through email or text. Thank you notes can have an even greater effect, as it improves your mood as the sender, as well as the receivers.
Something as small as setting aside five to ten minutes in your day to silently reflect on the things you are grateful for can have a major impact. Mindfulness meditation is a fairly common practice, as well as prayer.
For more ways to facilitate gratitude in your life, visit Grateful Living’s “How to Practice Gratitude”.
Expressing Gratitude at HPNE
From all of us at #TeamHPNE, we would like to take the time to thank our customers, employees, and stakeholders for their continued support. Our mission is to provide innovative bioprocessing equipment and solutions that allow our customers to produce life-saving therapies. None of that would be possible without you!
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About HPNE
As the industry needs grow, High Purity New England, Inc. continues to supply the biopharmaceutical industry with a range of innovative products, from drug discovery and development to fill-finish, including their flagship product, custom single-use assemblies, as well as pumps, sensors, bioreactor systems, storage and handling solutions and other single-use solutions. Along with their own manufactured products for the global market, they are also a distributor for more than 18 brands in North America.
