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Being grateful for people and things in your life can reduce the risk of a heart attack, research shows.
More than 900 people who took part in a survey were asked to what extent they agreed with the statement ‘I have so much in life to be grateful for’, and were also asked how strongly they felt ‘grateful towards a wide variety to people’. .
The findings showed that those who expressed the most gratitude were less likely to have a heart attack over the next four to nine years.
The evidence suggests that writing short lists of things you are grateful for can increase well-being and life satisfaction, with keeping a ‘gratitude journal’ now becoming increasingly popular.
However, the study found that people with high levels of gratitude only had a reduced risk of heart attack when stressful situations also increased their heart rate.
Findings showed that those who expressed the most gratitude were less likely to have a heart attack over the next four to nine years
In Britain, around one person is admitted to hospital every five minutes after a heart attack ? as many as 100,000 people a year
More research is needed because an increased heart rate in response to stress is more often linked to a greater risk of heart problems.
But the study authors suggest that the findings can be explained because people who are willing to put in more effort in stressful situations tend to be the ones who are most grateful in life.
This could increase their heart rate, but also mean they are less stressed overall; calmer people tend to live healthier lives, which means they are less likely to have a heart attack.
Mr Brian Leavy, a psychologist from Maynooth University in Ireland, who led the research, said: ‘The results obtained have provided further evidence that positive emotions, such as gratitude, are associated with better health outcomes, especially in promoting cardiovascular health .’
The study, published in the journal Biological Psychology, examined 912 people in the US with an average age of 57.
They were asked about gratitude and were also subjected to an arithmetic test to increase their stress levels.
They also took a test where they saw words as red, sometimes confusingly written in a yellow font, and had to quickly respond to the color of the font, rather than the color describing the word.
To increase the pressure of both tests, people were told that if they did not answer quickly enough, their answers would automatically be marked as wrong.
People who were very grateful for the things and people in their lives, and whose heart rate also increased in response to the stressful tests, were less likely to have a heart attack.
In Britain, about one person is admitted to hospital every five minutes after a heart attack; as many as 100,000 people per year.
The study’s findings suggest that grateful people, who can also be more optimistic and positive, engaged more in stressful tasks and tried harder to complete them, raising their heart rate – which could mean they felt less felt pressure.
That could prevent them from turning to unhealthy coping strategies that could harm their hearts, although this is speculation and not evidenced by the research.
People who were most grateful had a lower chance of having a heart attack, the study found, even after taking into account factors such as their age, body mass index (BMI) and whether they had ever smoked.
This is despite the fact that a third of study participants had high blood pressure and almost one in ten had diabetes, which can increase the risk of a heart attack.