Comment la gratitude change votre cerveau et votre corps

Il y a une tendance dans les études récentes sur la santé humaine : les conseils de maman s'avèrent être le meilleur remède. Lorsque votre mère vous a dit de manger votre fourrage grossier, d'aller jouer dehors, d'arrêter de regarder la télévision et de passer une bonne nuit de sommeil, elle n'a peut-être pas compris la science sous-jacente, mais elle savait de quoi elle parlait.

De nombreuses études montrent que manger des fruits et des légumes, passer du temps à l'extérieur, jouer librement, faire de l'exercice, éviter l'électronique et dormir suffisamment sont essentiels pour éviter les maladies chroniques. Nous comprenons maintenant comment ces habitudes de vie de bon sens affectent us au niveau cellulaire, nous les prenons donc plus au sérieux.

There’s another piece of mom’s advice that’s proven to be true: Count your blessings. In other words, be thankful for what you’ve got.

Il est logique que se sentir reconnaissant et exprimer sa gratitude rende us plus heureux, et un grand nombre de recherches le soutiennent. Les études qui suivent le comportement et les changements de mode de vie autodéclarés montrent également comment l'expression de la gratitude affecte notre santé et notre bien-être en général, les troubles de santé mentale, le dépassement des expériences traumatisantes et le sommeil ; Je vais résumer cette recherche dans la première section de ce post.

Mais parfois, nous avons besoin de preuves physiques pour vraiment croire que quelque chose est vrai. Ainsi, des études récentes ont posé la question : est-ce que l'expression de la gratitude modifie notre cerveau et notre corps au niveau cellulaire ? La réponse est oui, et je discuterai de cette recherche dans la deuxième partie de cet article.

Voici le hic : pour profiter des avantages d'exprimer sa gratitude, nous devons vraiment le penser. Nous ne pouvons pas simplement dire merci pour être polis, ou faire semblant d'être reconnaissants parce que cela rend us avoir l'air bien - nous devons nous sentir vraiment reconnaissants. Notre cerveau connaît la différence et les scanners cérébraux le montrent.

Exprimer sa gratitude améliore la santé mentale et physique, la qualité du sommeil et le comportement des adolescents

Many gratitude studies use writing as a way for people to express their gratitude. Among 293 people seeking psychotherapy services, those that wrote letters of gratitude reported significantly better mental health than control subjects both 4 weeks and 12 weeks after writing the letters. And a study of 192 people found that those who expressed gratitude through writing had a more positive outlook on life, experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness, and exercised nearly 1.5 hours more per week than control subjects.

Gratitude seems to be directly protective against stress and depression. A longitudinal study of college students found that those who felt more grateful experienced lower levels of stress and depression. The authors of the study suggest, as do other researchers, that this evidence has implications for clinical interventions in psychotherapy, since simple gratitude exercises often result in significant mental health improvements.

Feeling grateful may be a key factor in recovering from traumatic events. Research shows that among people with PTSD, those who express gratitude have higher self-esteem and improved daily functioning. And in studies of Vietnam War veterans and survivors of the septembre 11 attacks, those who felt that they had greater appreciation for their life, family, and friends, and were now “living life to the full,” were better able to recover from the trauma.

Expressing gratitude is especially important for people suffering from an illness, since these people are at increased risk for deteriorating mental health. A study of organ transplant patients found that those who spent 21 days writing down what they were grateful for experienced improved mental health and general well-being. Instead of experiencing no change, the control group had decreased mental health and well-being scores, showing the negative effects of suffering from a chronic illness.

Likewise, a study of people with neuromuscular disease over a 21-day period found that those who expressed gratitude had more positive high-energy moods, felt more optimistic about their life, felt more connected to others, and had longer sleep duration and better sleep quality relative to controls. And a study of heart failure patients found that those who felt more grateful experienced better sleep, less fatigue, fewer depressive symptoms, and better self-efficacy to maintain their cardiac function.

Better sleep might not be something you’d expect to get from expressing gratitude. But in a study of 401 people, those who felt more grateful got on average 30 minutes more sleep per night. They also had better sleep quality and sleep latency (time it takes to fall asleep) and less daytime fatigue than people who felt less grateful. The study used measures of gratefulness combined with self-reported pre-sleep cognitions (the thoughts we have just before we fall asleep). Previous research has linked positive pre-sleep cognitions to better sleep and negative pre-sleep cognitions with impaired sleep, but this was the first to show a direct link between gratitude and sleep quality. The study authors suggest the potential for using gratitude interventions in the treatment of insomnia.

Researchers from Hong Kong examined the complex relationship between gratitude, sleep, anxiety, and depression in 224 patients with chronic pain. They found a direct link between gratitude and depression, as the patients who expressed more gratitude experienced fewer depressive symptoms. But sleep played a significant role in the gratitude-anxiety relationship; the patients who expressed more gratitude experienced better sleep, which in turn improved their symptoms of anxiety. Similarly, other research shows that insufficient sleep can increase anxiety levels by 30%, and deep non-REM sleep is a natural anxiety inhibitor.

If you have children, experts recommend cultivating an attitude of gratitude with them early on. Among 221 6th and 7th graders, the students who expressed more gratitude were also more optimistic, had higher life satisfaction, and had higher satisfaction with their school experience.

A study of 700 students ages 10 to 14 found that grateful teens have fewer depressive symptoms, are happier with their lives overall, are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, and are less likely to have behavior problems at school. And a study of adolescents ages 11 to 17 found that daily gratitude journaling resulted in a significant decrease in materialism and an increase in gratitude and generosity. This finding is meaningful, as materialism in youth is on the rise, and it has been linked to anxiety and depression.

La gratitude stimule le système de récompense de notre cerveau

You may be familiar with the brain’s reward system, or at least the concept of it. When we desire something, when we experience the pleasure of getting it, and when we learn to associate these feelings of pleasure with getting what we want, our reward system is at work. The reward system is a group of brain structures that are activated both by intrinsic rewards that are inherently pleasurable—like food, sex, alcohol, and drugs—and extrinsic rewards that we are conditioned to find pleasurable, like money and success.

Alors que la recherche sur les zones cérébrales impliquées dans le sentiment de gratitude est relativement nouvelle, les résultats montrent jusqu'à présent que le sentiment de gratitude active des zones du cerveau qui font partie du système de récompense. C'est pourquoi les personnes qui expriment de la gratitude sont plus heureuses et moins susceptibles de développer des comportements addictifs.

Scientists used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to watch brain activity while people played a social interactive game involving receiving help from a partner. The brain scans showed that when the study participants felt grateful, their feelings were encoded in the ventral striatum, part of the brain’s reward system. The feelings of gratitude were then fed to the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex (pgACC; also involved in reward processing), which tracked feelings of gratitude over time.

A similar study used a social interactive game and fMRI to track brain activity during feelings of gratitude, and got similar results. Gratitude activated the pgACC and the ventral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which are linked to reward; for example, the reward of feeling relief from having a stressor removed. The study authors give an excellent discussion about the relationship between gratitude, morals, empathy, social connection, and pain perception.

A 2017 study was only the second study ever done to track how the brain changes with a regular gratitude practice. First, the researchers used fMRI to see what areas of the brain are involved in feeling gratitude as well as pure altruism (feelings of reward resulting from giving to others). They had similar results as the previously mentioned studies: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and the nucleus accumbens (part of the ventral striatum) were activated. Next, the study participants did gratitude journaling for three weeks, after which the activity in their vmPFC increased. The researchers concluded that gratitude journaling increased both gratitude and neural pure altruism, meaning that gratitude biases the brain’s reward system toward feeling rewards for others rather than oneself.

A study on the neural basis of human social values found that feeling gratitude activates the mesolimbic reward pathway. This dopaminergic pathway in the brain releases and transports domamine through reward system structures, regulating desire, motivation, reinforcement, reward-related motor learning, and pleasure. When the mesolimbic pathway is not functioning correctly, addiction is more likely to occur.

Now that we have some idea of how gratitude works in our brain, we have physical proof of why expressing gratitude makes us feel happy. Even more exciting is the potential that gratitude interventions have in clinical settings. A study of 2,616 people found that higher levels of gratitude were associated with a decreased risk for alcohol and drug abuse, depression, anxiety, and bulimia. And an important 2014 study found that expressing gratitude immediately increases self-control. One of the researchers suggests that simple gratitude exercises have “tremendous possibilities for reducing a wide range of societal ills from impulse buying and insufficient saving to obesity and smoking.”

La gratitude change aussi notre corps

Comme nous le savons, tout est lié. Il est donc logique qu'un cerveau plus heureux améliore la santé physique, en particulier en ce qui concerne le stress, comme la pression artérielle et le fonctionnement du système immunitaire.

A study of 186 heart failure patients found that those who felt more grateful had lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers—less inflammation occurring throughout their bodies. To further test their results, the researchers asked some of the patients to keep a gratitude journal for 8 weeks. Those who kept the journal experienced reductions in circulating levels of inflammatory biomarkers and reduced cardiac risk as compared to controls.

According to Dr. Robert A. Emmons, a leading expert on the science of gratitude, expressing gratitude has a number of other proven health benefits:

• 23 % de niveaux inférieurs de cortisol (une hormone du stress)
• Une réduction de 25 % de l'apport en graisses alimentaires
• 16 % de pression artérielle diastolique inférieure et 10 % de pression artérielle systolique inférieure
• 9-13% de baisse des taux d'hémoglobine A1c, un marqueur clé du contrôle de la glycémie qui joue un rôle important dans le diagnostic du diabète
• Niveaux inférieurs de créatinine, un indicateur de la capacité du rein à filtrer les déchets de la circulation sanguine

Comment intégrer une pratique de gratitude dans votre vie quotidienne

Si vous souhaitez intégrer la gratitude dans votre vie, vous serez heureux de savoir que c'est incroyablement facile. Pratiquer la gratitude ne prend pratiquement pas de temps et cela devient rapidement une habitude à laquelle vous n'avez même pas besoin de penser. Mieux encore, il a des effets d'entraînement qui amélioreront rapidement de nombreux aspects de votre santé mentale et physique.

If you enjoy writing, keep a gratitude journal. This can take just a few minutes per day, and it’s fun to look back on.

To improve your sleep, write in a gratitude journal at bedtime or spend time thinking about what you’re grateful for when you get in bed at night. As we learned, gratitude improves sleep duration and quality by changing pre-sleep cognitions.

If you live with family members or others, ask them every evening: What happened today that you’re grateful for? If you have kids, start this practice at a young age.

Reframe something that you tend to think about negatively. For example, if you’re not happy at your job, write down a list of the good things about your job. You’ll likely find that by focusing on the positive aspects, you’ll feel more grateful and be happier at work.

When you say “thank you,” make it heartfelt and genuine. Sometimes we say it quickly, or not at all, assuming that it’s implied. Make it clear that you’re very grateful by following it up with “I really appreciate it” or explaining why what the person did for you was so helpful.

Lecture recommandée:

The Pain Relief Secret: How to Retrain Your Nervous System, Heal Your Body, and Overcome Chronic Pain by Sarah Warren, CSE

Somatics: Reawakening the Mind’s Control of Movement, Flexibility and Health by Thomas Hanna