Fuel your passion to live longer and happier

When Cynthia Nixon played American poet Emily Dickinson in the 2016 movie “A Quiet Passion,” she portrayed the boundless emotional intensity that Dickinson poured into her art. Your passions can be just as artful, because they protect your ability to stay healthy and happy in your body and brain.

A recent review of multiple studies, done by Norwegian researchers and published in Brain Health, found that when you have an increased passion for something, that increases the amount of physical activity you get, leading to more social interaction and relationships, and improving cognitive resilience and your well-being. Those benefits all work together to reduce chronic stress -one of the most physically and emotionally damaging of conditions. The research also found that they work together to help preserve the neural systems in your brain’s grey and white matter and protect organ systems from wear and tear. Now that’s exciting!

Need help finding your passion? Let yourself dream -- what have you always wanted to try? Then experiment with various ideas to see what is the most enthralling. According to multiple studies, passion’s health benefits, including slowing down aging, can come from being enthusiastic about almost anything, from exercising to painting, helping others, or bird watching.

You can find help identifying your passion and building a sense of purpose in Dr. Mike’s free newsletter at michaelfroizenmd.substack.com. It outlines the power of passion and seven other attributes to increase your healthy longevity. And check out the iherb.com blog, “8 Essential Nutrients That Support Longevity.”