THE HEALING power of KINDNESS

Want to boost your immune system, ease depression and lower your blood pressure? Here’s how, explains a leading scientist in his extraordinary new book...

WE’RE all wired for kindness. We act kindly because we know instinctively that it’s the right thing to do, though we also all know that the world could do with more kindness.

I grew up in a small community where everyone helped each other. It was common to have a neighbour knock on the door for a cup of sugar or some milk, and it was this sharing that knitted people together.

When I became a scientist, working on developing drugs for cardiovascular disease and cancer, I left this small village behind and moved to a large city and the faster pace of urban life.

But I still carried its spirit with me. So much so that eventually I decided to study the ways in which a network of relationships sustained by kindness can benefit us all, both physically and psychologically — and how it can slow the effects of ageing too.

GOOD DEEDS SMOOTH YOUR WRINKLES

PEOPLE under stress tend to get more colds and be more prone to infections and disease. And as we get older, the immune system also weakens, a phenomenon known as immunosenescence.

But several studies have shown that kindness, both giving and receiving, gives the immune system a quantifiable boost.

A generally positive attitude to life’s stressors helps us recover faster from illness and strengthens our ability to fight off disease.

Kindness can even slow the formation of wrinkles. Groups of unstable molecules called free radicals produce something called oxidative stress in the body, which itself causes all kinds of nasty physiological reactions, including hardening of the arteries and memory loss. It also leads to wrinkles and other visible signs of ageing.

But being kind produces a substance called oxytocin, often known as ‘the love hormone’ because we make more of it when we feel love; when we share warm emotional contact of any type and also when we have sex.

The less oxytocin we have, the more free radicals we get (think for a moment of how skin ages under stress or emotional conflict), but the converse is true too, which is why being kind helps smooth wrinkles.

‘Ah,’ I hear you say, ‘I’m a kind person, but I’ve still got wrinkles.’

I take your point, but I promise you the speed at which wrinkles form can be slowed by lowering stress levels, alongside obvious factors like eating well and not smoking.

Think of it the other way around. What about the way worry can turn your hair white? Or how persistent anger can become etched on a person’s face?

These are all feelings and they all have a visible effect. Kindness is no different.

THINKING OF OTHERS BEATS DEPRESSION

A FACT proven by a large body of scientific evidence, including a psychological study at the University of California, Riverside, where volunteers were asked to perform five acts of kindness per week for six weeks. These included donating

blood, paying for someone’s parking by filling the meter or visiting an ellderly relative. Using established measurements of happiness, psyhologists found that the people who performed the acts of kindness became happier, while a control group who didn’t, well, didn’t. What’s more, it turned out that the greatest gains in happiness were when the five acts were all done on the same day. Kindness can also alleviate depression: helping others has been shown to have a particularly strong anti-depressant effect on adults over 65 years of age.

FIVE SWEET PHRASES TO MEND YOUR MARRIAGE

KINDNESS is relationship glue. The psychologist John Gottman, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, is one of the best known relationship and marital stability experts in the world and after a lifetime’s study, he’s come up with a proven formula to predict whether or not a relationship will last.

So long as we say or do more than five positive things for each negative thing, he says, a relationship is likely to work out. Positives tend to include kindness, affection, love, support and listening; negatives include contempt, hostility, anger, negative judgments, selfishness and indifference.

In one example of his work, Professor Gottman and his colleagues studied 700 newlywed couples for 15 minutes and, by counting the positives and negatives, predicted with 94% accuracy who would still be together ten years later.

It’s the little things that count in a relationship — the back rubs, the cups of tea, the listening when you speak. As we offer these kindnesses, our relationship gets stronger.

COMPASSION CAN PROTECT YOUR HEART

FEELINGS evoked by kindness — warmth, inspiration, emotional connection — have a physical impact.

Just as feeling embarrassed causes our face to flush, while feeling excited speeds up our heart rate, so the feelings brought about by kindness affect our brains and body, especially the heart.

This is where our old friend oxytocin comes in. Physiologically, it causes cells along the walls of our arteries to relax; and when our arteries widen, our blood pressure goes down.

Reduced blood pressure ultimately means protection against heart attack and stroke. The good news is that frequent acts of kindness or affection have cumulative long-term positive effects, leading over time to a sustained lowering of blood pressure.

AND BEST OF ALL... IT’S CONTAGIOUS

SITTING in a coffee shop the other day, I watched a young woman, smiling and cheerful, hand a sandwich and hot drink to a homeless man on the street outside. It was a heart-warming act of kindness, unnoticed by most. But I felt uplifted, inspired even.

When I left the coffee shop an hour later, I found myself making an extra effort to be helpful to people — friends, family, shop assistants, colleagues, everyone.

In effect, the young woman’s act of kindness provoked in me an impulse to be kind too.

Social scientists talk about something called the ‘three-degree rule’, which means that each time we are kind, we inspire someone else to be kind (one degree), who inspires someone else (two degrees), who inspires someone else (three degrees).

Through one simple act of kindness, you can set in motion a long chain of positive events.