#55 Volunteer and Improve Your Health

There is some link between our happiness and the health of our heart.  Scientists have known this since the 1970’s when it was discovered that those people who are chronically tense, angry, and demanding (Type A personalities) also tend to have higher cholesterol levels and are more prone to heart attacks.  Researchers theorize that chronic irritability releases chemicals which convert lipids in the blood into LDL.

But does engaging in the opposite behavior—altruism, gratitude, savoring, for example—alter our heart health?  Psychologist Hannah Schreier at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and her colleagues, sought to find out by asking 106 high school students to participate in a study on volunteering.  Half of the students spent about one hour per week helping younger children with an activity—either homework, sports, or a club activity.  They did so for eight consecutive weeks. The other half of the students, the control group, did not do any volunteering.

The student volunteers were tested at the end of the study and found to have lower cholesterol levels than when they began the study.  They also had lower levels of inflammation and lower levels of body fat than the students who were wait-listed.  It did not seem to matter what type of volunteering the student did.

How could such a simple activity, over a short period of time, alter one’s health? The researchers did a further analyses of which students in the intervention group had the biggest gains in health.  They found that those who reported the highest levels (on several personality scales) of empathy for others, altruistic behavior, and the lowest levels of negative mood had the most improvement to their health.  Researchers have established previously that volunteering seems to make the elderly healthier and longer lived.  This was the first study to establish the same effect for teen-agers.  Thus, the effects are likely beneficial for all ages.

If previous entries to this publication haven’t convinced you to start volunteering, you now have another reason—do it for your health.  What’s holding you back?

References

Schreier, H., Schonert-Reichie, K., & Chen, E.  Feb. 25, 2013.  Effect of volunteering  on risk factors for cardiovascular disease in adolescents.  JAMA Pediatrics, 167 (4), 327-332.  Link to the article:  http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1655500

#19 Sow Beauty

 

“Resident sows beauty, sense of community”

“I love beautiful colors and flowers,” said William Hollins, a photographer and business owner in the West End, a renovated inner city neighborhood in Atlanta.  “I want to look out the window and see beautiful things.”  This is the reason he gives for his habit of going for a walk almost every day for the past 25 years and doing some small task to beautify his neighborhood.  He picks up trash and debris.  He even blows away the leaves from the sidewalks.  When interviewed for the piece in the newspaper, he had just planted a garden around HowellPark.  He accomplished this by dragging the garden hose from his house across a major street to water the flowers.

Hollins said he developed the sense of community responsibility from his father who often gathered his children along with other neighbors to clean up the vacant lot and streets around their home in an inner city Chicago neighborhood.  Hollins viewed the way his family treated the neighborhood as reflective of the way they treated other people—with care and respect.  “It’s part of my ministry to put a smile on people’s face,” Hollins was quoted saying, “and the garden is just one way.”

• Take a walk to your local park if you live in the city.  How does it look?  Would it benefit from some flowers?  Consider planting some as Mr. Hollins did.  Record how you felt afterwards.

• Do you live in a small town or out in the country?  How do the roads look?  When I have been out in the countryside on long distance bicycle rides I have been disappointed to see some roads blighted by large quantities of trash along the roadsides and ditches, but uplifted by patches of wildflowers and blooming bulbs.  Who were these people who planted them there?  Take a morning when there is little traffic and reclaim one small area.  Pick up the trash and plant some flowers.  Other people do notice.  Record how you felt.

• Not into flowers?  Go to you’re your local United Way website and look at volunteer opportunities.  For example, if you enter “United Way, Des Moines” as a search command in Google, you will be directed to the United Way of Central Iowa website.  There you will find a list of volunteer opportunities.  Volunteering does not necessarily entail a long commitment.  Some are as brief as a two hour event of stuffing back-to-school backpacks for poor children on one day only.  Pick one.  Record how you felt afterwards.

References

. Conwell, V.  Oct. 6, 2004.  “Resident Sows Beauty, Sense of Community.”  Atlanta Journal Constitution, E7.

www.unitedway.org