How Does Helping Others Help depression And Improving Your Health Lifestyle?
Helping others can have a variety of positive outcomes, but there is a catch. You still need to remember to "put on your own oxygen mask first," as the somewhat new adage goes. While self-care is essential, helping others is always a necessary component of self-care. Here are four ways that helping others can benefit your own health.
1. It can help you live a longer life.
Volunteering has been shown in studies to improve people's ability to manage stress, lower the rate of depression, and even lower their risk of serious disease. This could be due to a greater sense of overall life satisfaction as a result of participating in something they believe is important, as well as the strong community ties that many volunteers develop. These ties help to alleviate loneliness, which has been linked to depression and can even weaken the immune system.
2. It helps to lower your blood pressure.
Volunteering can help lower blood pressure just as much as a healthy diet and exercise. According to one study, elderly people who volunteer for as little as 200 hours per year (or roughly 4 hours per week) have a 40% reduction in hypertension. This is most likely related to the same causes of longer life: helping others helps you develop deeper ties to a community, which helps stave off loneliness, which can cause a variety of health issues.
3. You Can Improve Your Mood
Chronic depression, for example, can cause a variety of health problems. Helping others, on the other hand, has been shown to have a significant impact on the overall sense of well-being or "happiness" of people who regularly participate in volunteer efforts. According to research, biology rewards us for good behavior by releasing a number of mood-boosting neurotransmitters whenever we engage in some act of altruism.
4. You Have the Ability to Reduce Pain
In one study of people suffering from chronic pain, it was discovered that when they helped their peers who were also suffering from chronic pain, they actually experienced a reduction in their own pain. Even if you don't have chronic pain, focusing on the needs of others can help you forget about your own.
Helping others does not always have to take the form of volunteering. Individuals have discovered that doing something as simple as paying for the drink of the person in front of you at the coffee shop can have a significant impact on their emotional well-being. Simply looking for opportunities to perform random acts of kindness can significantly improve your overall health.