Stay grateful - it could help you live longer

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-07-04 01:00

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People who more frequently notice and feel grateful for the positive things in their lives may be less likely to die prematurely, according to international research. To investigate how gratitude might affect our health, the researchers gave questionnaires to nearly 50,000 older US nurses to assess how often they felt grateful. Following up three years later, just over 4,600 of them had died. The researchers say those who scored highly on the gratitude questionnaire were 9% less likely to have died compared to those who scored the lowest, after accounting for other factors including physical and mental health, demographic information and their social lives. The team says they'd like to see similar research in a more diverse group of people to confirm the link, but there are simple ways we can work on feeling grateful in our lives that may help us in the long run.