In the COVID pandemic age, I have thought a lot about the emotional well-being of my patients and others. I have also been looking at Blue Zones, areas in the world where we will find the longest living people.

You are probably wondering where I am going with this thought thread. Today, I want to briefly explore how giving (and being a part of a community) can boost your physical and psychological well-being.

Blue zone — Nicoya (Costa Rica)

This Central American nation isn’t that far from the United States, but it is well ahead of us in life length.

While there are many contributing factors to the longevity of the Nicoya region of Costa Rica, the good folks at bluezone.com note that Nicoyan centenarians “get frequent visits from neighbors. They know how to listen, laugh, and appreciate what they have.”

Community matters: Nicoyan centenarians frequently visit with neighbors, and they tend to live with families who provide support and a sense of purpose.

The theme of robust communities extends to the other Blue Zone communities, including Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia, Loma Linda (USA), and Ikaria (Greece).

Giving is good for health

Do you volunteer for a hospital, soup kitchen, or other organization? Did you know that you are getting psychological and physical health benefits? These upsides may include:

• Improved self-esteem, mood, and stress levels
• Lower blood pressure
• Greater levels of satisfaction
• Longer life

Volunteer, and you stimulate your brain’s reward centers. Joggers have their “runner’s high,” and the charitable experience a “giver’s high.”

Three brain chemicals are essential drivers of happiness: Dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin neurochemicals can boost your mood. Volunteer, and you create a happiness trifecta.

Dopamine is associated with our motivation and arousal. Serotonin is linked to learning, memory, appetite, digestion, and sleep.

Finally, oxytocin — the so-called cuddle hormone — affects blood pressure, sexual arousal, empathy, and bonding. Abonus of oxytocin surges? Reductions in pain and better wound healing.

Did you know that we can positively impact the brains of others? Mirror nerve cells (neurons) in our brains are powerful: Smile and others smile as you trigger their mirror neurons.

Get creative with your acts of kindness. Happiness researchers Sonja Lyubomirsky and Kennon Sheldon discovered that individuals who performed a variety of acts of kindness throughout the week had more significant happiness increases than those who performed the same activity repeatedly.

RAKtivists

I was delighted to run across the term “RAKtivist,” or a “Random Acts of Kindness activist” in a recent CNN piece. Spread kindness, and you will not only help others feel good about themselves. You also get a boost in health, and happiness is a great bonus.

What does this mean from a practical perspective for me? I am writing more old-school notes (handwritten) to folks about whom I care, reminding them of how much I value them. I randomly positively respond to online posts. We have too much negativity in that space. Of course, I must do much more.

Do you do random acts of kindness? If so, what do you do? Thank you for joining me today. I genuinely appreciate that you took the time to read this piece.

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Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. — Albert Schweitzer

Truth is often found in places we might not think to look. But some simple poems we teach to children can offer what we need to hear. This phrase is from “Little Things”:

Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Help to make earth happy
Like the heaven above — Julia Abigail Fletcher Carney

Kindness is often viewed as acts of charity derived from our sense of goodness or obligation toward others. But compassion and charity have benefits we haven’t heard about, and they re significant. Yes, altruism, but we receive a benefit from it.

Researchers know that anything we do can be quantified and modified with the right design, even kindness, and they’ve provided evidence of its effectiveness in our health.

Social relationships, such as charity and kindness, provide the recipient and the giver benefit. We know “that social relationship…moderates or buffers the deleterious influence of stressors.” Where is the benefit of modifying stressors?

Stress buffering (aka support) through “social relationships affect health through behavioral, psychosocial, and physiological pathways.” What pathways might kindness or social support affect?

Several recent review articles provide consistent and compelling evidence linking a low quantity or quality of social ties with a host of conditions, including development and progression of cardiovascular disease, recurrent myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, autonomic dysregulation, high blood pressure, cancer and delayed cancer recovery, and slower wound healing.

Lack of human contact predicted mortality. The medical profession was stunned to learn that infants would die without social interaction. Seemingly this new evidence provided that what was expected for human health wasn’t sufficient. They found nurturing and physical touch to be vital to an infant’s mortality.

Those who wish to read the work of Rene Spitz on this topic and hospitalism, can find it here.

Video footage of Dr. Spitz’ research is here. A number of videos are available on that site. Ethics are of prime importance and should be questioned by anyone who watchs these videos. They bear a similar lack of ethical consideration as those of Little Albert.

Kindness Knows No Color

Today, there was a New York Times obituary for Dr. Renee C. Fox, someone I’d never known or read about. She had created the field of bioethics in her writings and one of her books, Experiment Perilous: Physicians and Patients Facing the Unknown.

I was intrigued, and a few lines of her obituary caught my attention. I knew it had to be passed on in a Medium article. The subject was kindness and how someone had provided something no hospital can prescribe, kindness.

Diagnosed with polio as a college student, Dr. Fox was admitted to Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, which usually treated Black patients. It was here that she got the one treatment that mattered most.

In her memoir, Professor Fox paid tribute to a Black nurse who got her through the first night. “I do not know her name,” she wrote. “But I do know that I survived that night because she put her head beside mine on the pillow where I lay, and breathed every breath with me.”

My Own Experience with Kindness

Working in an office as a young girl at my first job, I became very ill, and my supervisor decided that I should go home. I had to take the subway by myself since there was no one to accompany me. The train ride would take at least 45 minutes to an hour.

While on the train, I became so ill that I could barely sit up in the seat, and I had to get off at a stop where I needed to change trains. I didn’t know if I’d make it.

I was barely able to walk off the train. Although many people were walking around the station platform and on the train, no one stopped.

But one woman saw my distress. A Black older woman came up to me to ask if I was feeling sick. “Yes, I feel like I’m going to faint.” She helped me sit down on a bench, put her arm around me, and said, “Can you call your mother?” I told her I had her phone number, which she took to make the call for me.

A few minutes later she returned and told me, “Don’t worry, baby, your mother’s coming and I’ll wait with you until she gets here.”

As we waited for my mother to come, I suspect it must have been at least 45 minutes, the woman put her arm around me and continued to tell me that it would be okay and that she wouldn’t leave until my mother arrived.

Once my mother appeared on the platform to take me home, the woman greeted her, indicated she hoped I’d be okay, and left without another word. I never knew her name, I can’t remember what she looked like, but I will always remember what she did.

The woman had probably been subjected to incredible racism by white people in her life, but she helped a white stranger in distress and asked nothing for it. It was the right thing to do, and she showed incredible kindness. I will never forget her.

One Day a Year

Each year on February 17th, National Random Acts of Kindness Day grows in popularity. It is celebrated by individuals, groups and organizations nationwide to encourage acts of kindness.

The movement of Random Acts of Kindness inspires people every day. As a favorite celebration for many, people everywhere are enjoying doing these acts of kindness. Not only do the acts of kindness bring joy to the receiver, but they spread positive reactions to the giver, too!

There are many ways to practice random acts of kindness, as I experienced. And the group that helps us reflect and celebrate kindness toward others has plenty of suggestions. Here’s a list the group provided to get you started on a new way of living and, perhaps in the process, improving your health:

Pay for the coffee or meal of the person in front of you in line.

Leave a kind note for someone, no explanation needed.

Share words of encouragement. You never know who might need them.

Put your skills to work for someone in need. For example, offer to create a résumé for someone seeking a new job.

Drop off a load of groceries at the local food pantry.

Mail a “thinking of you” card to someone you’ve not to talk to in a while.

Order a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to anyone in the hospital. That means, call the florist and tell them to pick a hospital or nursing home and deliver flowers to the person the front desk thinks needs it the most. It could be a sick child, an elderly person with no family, or a college student down on their luck.

Send a thank-you note to the local fire department, police departments, or any military personnel.

Just smile.

The Physical and Mental Benefits of Kindness

Being altruistic and practicing acts of kindness, no matter how small or insignificant you think they are, can lengthen your life, some researchers believe.

Biogerontologists are studying the molecular and cellular science of aging with the goal of its eventual deceleration. One plausible hypothesis that should be simultaneously investigated is longevity enhancement through the cultivation of generous emotions and helping behaviors. The research is quite extensive at this point, but they’re extending it even more.

Volunteering for as little as 40 hours a year or less has a positive effect on those who engage in this activity because, it is believed, of a combination of factors including self-identity, social role, and meaningfulness.

Any volunteering appears to have a protective effect on mortality among everyone and is seen as a two-way street for giving and receiving. But the receiving is done on an invisible, individual basis by the volunteer in terms of health, self-satisfaction, and longevity.

A 12-week study researched a twice-weekly recycling program where volunteer in a community-based care center recycled paper products, plastics, and metals and disposing of electronic products and sorting clothes. Participants had significantly improved in terms of their gate speed compared to baseline.

The average range of the persons in the groups was 65 to 75. It was decided that civic engagement is an essential means of maintaining good health in later years, as shown in multiple studies.

Several of the significant factors would appear to be that older individuals need a sense of purpose and involvement in economic life and social value, enabling them to perceive themselves in a healthier manner. Doing volunteer work also has a positive effect on retired individuals and can combat feelings of depression and self-worth.

Another study of volunteers for older adults found “significantly increased physical activity, improved self-rated health, and reduced depression symptoms over 20 years.”

Kindness is its own reward we hear, but research has shown that kindness has rewards for everyone and should be highly encouraged.

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Do we need research to tell us that we will receive something wonderful in return for thinking of others in their time of need? If that’s what anyone needs to help them rethink their behavior, OK, bring it on.

Literature and films all laud the heartwarming aspects of charity and caring for our brothers and sisters worldwide, regardless of religious beliefs. We watch a classic like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and we feel renewed in our beliefs that things can turn around. How many saw Mary Bailey as the true hero here and failed to give her the due she deserved? Well, a WAPO columnist did.

Many of us will watch the several iterations of the film “A Christmas Carol” and see what pushes Scrouge to repent his miserly actions and channel the true spirit of Christmas. But first, Scrouge has to be scared witless by the three ghosts of Christmas. Who knew it had ghosts, or are they simply spirits? I’ll leave that to the literature scholars.

The season is a time of sharing, goodwill, and charity. Whether it’s a religious holiday (or holy day) isn’t the issue here. Human dignity and fair treatment of others are the emphases.

Those who celebrate Kwanzaa have returned to the true essence of the season where the cost of a gift isn’t the issue (really, a Lexus?), and it should be replaced with a gift made for the receiver.

I’ve worked in mental health centers where patients, who had been in psychiatric hospitals for decades, didn’t know what an appropriate Christmas gift might be. One man gave someone a pound of raw bacon, and he was a bit unnerved that he didn’t receive a hearty thanks for it. Another patient gave a single Bic pen wrapped in Christmas paper to a worker. The joy exhibited was moving.

The writer O’Henry enriched our reading and the spirit of love in difficult times when he wrote “The Gift of the Magi.” If you haven’t read it, you have a link here. Of course, in my readings, someone asked why one of the kings brought the gift of myrrh, an oil that is used for the solemn procedures before burial. Again, the scholars can debate.

Enter the Research

Research hasn’t failed us in providing proof that giving is as good to the recipient as the giver and perhaps more so. One form of charity doesn’t have the effect we would expect and it’s anxiety.

The so-called checkout charity solicitations often bring anxiety, and their “results caution managers that checkout charity solicitations may have unintended consequences on customers that result in negative encounter outcomes, particularly in service environments in which the solicitation is technology-mediated.” I’m reminded of the supermarkets asking if I wanted to “round up” on my order for charity. Pharmacy chains do this as well.

Guess what one incredible benefit of giving can be. All of you might be interested in a study that indicated that charitable giving might promote longer life. That’s like paying it forward big time.

This study indicates that “older people who are helpful to others reduce their risk of dying by nearly 60 percent compared to peers who provide neither practical help nor emotional support to relatives, neighbors or friends.” Maybe we should have plaques with “Give Unto Others and Prolong Your Life.”

Altruism does affect us by lowering our stress hormone levels and thereby increasing our immune system’s ability to protect us. Good? Better than good, and cancer may be tamed through charitable works. Volunteering is a wonderful way to help others, so money is not the issue.

All of us need a sense of worth and belonging to our culture. Research out of an Alzheimer’s center indicated that volunteering and giving of ourselves can contribute to possibly staving off neurological illness, heart disease, and stroke. Again, the return to the giver is in good health indicators.

When we feel our lives and activities have been limited, there is time for charitable works either via the internet or some other activity. Think about it.

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