How Can We Improve Our Health Through Happiness?

Psychoimmunology is a discipline that studies the relationship between immunity, the endocrine system, and the central and peripheral nervous systems.

Essentially how we think and feel, and how that can affect our immune system. Such an important topic with our immunity being at the forefront of our minds, combined with fear and anxiety at current political situations around the world.

So why do I bring this up?

Well, Sunday 20th March represents World Happiness Day and I wanted to take a moment to share with you the importance of happiness and what you can do to improve your happiness, and as such your health.

Being in a state of anxiety and worry I am sure you will agree is the opposite of being happy. In this emotional state, our central nervous system (that thing that controls our whole body) moves into what we call a sympathetic state, better known as ‘fight and flight’. 

When in this fight and flight state our body is primed to run or fight, a primitive action of our body from the time of sabre tooth tigers. Now at that time in history, it would have saved us. But let’s think, the running from a threat like that would only have lasted minutes, until you got or away, or got eaten…

Nowadays the anxiety is constant and what happens in this situation is the ‘stress signal’, which for a short period of time moves through our nerves, now begins to affect our hormones via a fancy pathway in the brainstem called the HPA axis.

Long term changes in hormone balance are linked to poor body functioning, illness and poor immunity.

Therefore, one of the best things we can do to improve our overall health is to reduce our anxiety.

Easier said than done I know!

So let’s think of this a different way, instead of reducing stress (and in line with Happiness Day), let’s talk about how we can improve our happiness.

Gandhi said; “to find true happiness, one must lose themselves in the service of others”.

I couldn’t agree more, and similar to not focusing on reducing the negative (anxiety), instead of focusing on how we can improve our own happiness, let’s focus on how we can improve someone else’s happiness.

Give happiness and you will receive happiness.

Here are my top tips for how you can bring some joy to your life through serving others:

1. Offer to help carry shopping.

2. Give a compliment to a stranger.

3. Smile and look others in the eye.

4. Pay for the coffee in the queue behind you.

5. Hug someone for more than 6 seconds.

Happy Happiness Day all.

With love,

Tom