By Sandy Priester.
There are surprising health benefits to living a life of service.
Lynne McTaggart is an investigative journalist who lives in England and writes about intention, healing, and spirituality. In a new blog post “How to live 100” she shares studies that link spiritual connection and living a service-filled life to a longer, healthier life.
Perhaps the most compelling piece of research of all about the transformational effects of spiritual service has been carried out by psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, who wanted to examine the difference in likely future health between healthy people who live a fulfilling life of pleasure – what we’d normally define as the good life – compared to those who live a life of purpose or meaning.
Among the pleasure seekers, the psychologists were amazed to discover high levels of inflammation, considered a marker for degenerative illnesses, and lower levels of gene expression involved in antibody synthesis, the body’s response to outside attack. … These people were all perfect candidates for a heart attack, Alzheimer’s disease…. In a few years, they would be dropping like flies.
Those whose lives were not as affluent or stress-free but were purposeful and filled with meaning, on the other hand, had low inflammatory markers and a down regulation of stress-related gene expression, both indicative of rude good health.
If you have to choose one path over the other, the researchers concluded, choosing a life of meaning over one just chasing pleasure is undeniably better for your health. Read the full blog.
It is never too late to make positive changes in your life. Keeping the focus on how you are supporting others is a life-long journey with many positive rewards, including better health.
