Volunteer
Work Is Good for Your Brain
Mercola:
3.15.2018 by Dr. Mercola
Only
about 25 percent of Americans volunteer, despite the fact that doing good
for others stands to benefit everyone involved. Volunteer work is unique in
that it often involves social, physical and cognitive dimensions, and research
has shown that retired seniors who engage in activities that require moderate
effort in two or more of these dimensions slash their risk of dementia by
47 percent.
“An
active and socially integrated lifestyle in late life protects against dementia
and AD [Alzheimer’s
disease],” the researchers wrote, and volunteering is one way to achieve
this. Since volunteers are needed in a seemingly endless variety of
organizations, from animal shelters and schools to food pantries and youth
services, there’s a volunteer opportunity to appeal to virtually everyone. It
costs you nothing, save for some time, and while giving back to those around
you you’ll reap impressive benefits to your brain.
Volunteering
Lowers Your Risk of Cognitive Impairment and Decline
The
brain benefits of volunteering are so great that researchers writing in the
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggested doctors should start
writing their senior patients prescriptions for volunteer work. They found that
in individuals aged 60 and over, volunteering regularly decreased the risk of
cognitive impairment over a 14-year period.
Volunteering
May Buffer Daily Stress, Benefit Your Heart
Exactly
how volunteering helps brain health remains to be seen, although it’s been
suggested that the social element of helping others, along with the stimulation
of learning new things, could be factors. It’s also quite possible that
the brain benefits stem, at least in part, from other bodywide benefits that
volunteering offers. Volunteering can lower your risk of depression and anxiety and even
boost your psychological well-being.
Volunteering
to help others can even lead to a so-called "helper's high," which
may occur because doing good releases feel-good hormones like oxytocin in your
body while lowering levels of stress hormones like cortisol.
Impressive,
Whole-Body Benefits of Volunteering
Volunteering’s
many benefits are not limited to one area of the body like your brain or your
heart but rather appear to extend bodywide. Volunteerism is linked to lower
all-cause mortality in older adults, for instance, and additional benefits
such as the following have also been noted:
➤Greater
life satisfaction
➤Greater
self-esteem
➤Increased
personal control
➤Fewer
depressive symptoms
Delaying
the onset of functional limitations that predict psychological distress among
older adults
Meeting
the ‘Volunteering Threshold’
It’s
unclear exactly how much volunteer work is necessary to reap its physical and
mental rewards. However, some findings indicated that volunteering for about
100 hours a year may offer the greatest health advantages, and CNCS states that
“it is not the case that the more an individual volunteers, the greater the
health benefits.” Instead, they suggest there is a “volunteer threshold” that
must be met — volunteering at least one or two hours a week — and after that no
additional health benefits are gained from volunteering more. READ MORE
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