Random Acts of Kindness

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By Leslie Pepper

For the healthiest heart, take part in the spirit of giving. Volunteers have lower rates of heart disease than nonvolunteers.

The holiday season of giving is a good time to perform random acts of kindness. The concept is practically a no-brainer: Give just a little of yourself, and make a huge impact on someone else.
           
What’s more, experts say, giving can have a positive effect on your own life as well. “Evidence suggests that random acts of kindness create what’s been called the ‘helper’s high’—a profound sense of well-being and optimism,” says Larry Dossey, M.D., former co-chair of the National Institutes of Health Panel on Mind/Body Intervention and author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things (Three Rivers Press, 2007, $14). And the high goes beyond just the emotional realm. A growing body of evidence is proving that helper’s high can boost your body, too.
           
“The science is striking in support for the theory that acting for the good of others contributes to physical well-being,” says Stephen Post, Ph.D., a bioethics professor at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. For 12 years, Post studied how altruism affects health, and co-wrote a book on it called Why Good Things Happen to Good People (Random House, 2007, $24). “Although benevolence is intended to benefit the well-being of the recipient, it also nourishes the giver,” he says.
           
Just this year, the Corporation for National Service, using health and volunteering data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that states with a high volunteer rate had lower rates of heart disease. Another study, published in the Journal of Health Psychology, followed about 600 older adults. After adjusting for differences in socioeconomic status, prior health status, smoking, social support, and physical activity, volunteerism decreased death rates by more than 44 percent.

Negative emotions are bad for the body, so it makes sense that the opposite holds true. “This transformation of being and of doing seems to promote emotional and physical well-being and, odds are, will add years to your life,” Post says. Put more simply, it’s good to do good.