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Five-year study suggests people who help others greatly reduce their chances of dying

The old adage that it is better to give than to receive is more than just biblical wisdom or a mother's chasten to her child -- science is proving it to be the key to a healthier, happier, even longer, life.

A flurry of research is showing that giving has a whole range of health benefits, including fewer aches and pains, better mental health, lower stress levels and improved protection against illness.

And if one study has it right, the best gift you can give this Christmas is yourself. Benevolence, it found, can be better than not smoking or exercising four times a week if it is long life you seek.

Stephen Post, an American bioethicist examining the growing body of evidence linking altruism to improved health, says people have always understood giving has benefits. But no one has quite figured out exactly why that is.

With the season of giving upon us, his mind casts to A Christmas Carol and how the protagonist in the fabled Charles Dicken's story grew happier after turning uncharacteristically charitable.

"Think about Ebenezer Scrooge and how he was liberated and enlivened, the way in which something powerful in him that was disinhibited as he became generous. You wonder, in the process, did he become healthier, did he live longer?" Post said in an interview from his office at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. "Well, Dickens doesn't tell us. But science suggests now quite strongly that the new Scrooge outlives the old one."

Take a five-year study by psychologists at the University of Michigan that reveals those who helped others greatly reduced their chances of dying compared to those who did not.

The study, published last summer in the journal Psychological Science, surveyed more than 400 elderly couples on their tendencies to provide emotional support to spouses, friends and relatives as well as their willingness to help with tasks such as babysitting or errands.

Those who did not help were more than twice as likely to die over the five-year study period than those who did.

"Making a contribution to the lives of other people may help to extend our own lives," Stephanie Brown, a psychologist at the university's Institute for Social Research and the lead author of the paper, said after the study's release. "These findings suggest that it isn't what we get from relationships that makes contact with others so beneficial; it's what we give."

Studies have also borne out how people who volunteer their time to help others tend to be better off than those who do not. One of the early studies on this, conducted by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley and published in 1999, surveyed more than 2,000 people and showed folks who lent their time for two or more organizations had an astounding 63 per cent lower likelihood of dying during the five years they were studied.

Even when the results were adjusted for other factors, including health and psychological status, the busy volunteer still enjoyed a 44 per cent lower risk than the person who did not volunteer at all.

"Most people would be amazed at that," Post said. "You might also want to know that in that study moderate helping behaviour is more strongly associated with longevity than is not smoking."

The study also found volunteering was also a stronger influence than regular exercise and going to church every Sunday.

For Christians, the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi directs "grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive."

It turns out those who heed the prayer are less likely to suffer anxiety and depression. A study examining the lives of more than 2,000 church-goers in the United States shows those who were of the giving kind tended to be in better mental health than those who were not.

"The findings really emphasize how helping others can help oneself," said University of Massachusetts behavioral scientist Carolyn Schwartz, the lead author of the study. The work appeared in Psychosomatic Medicine last fall.

Schwartz and her colleagues suspect this could be because those who help others are less likely to focus on their own anxieties and depression and are more apt to see their own troubles in perspective.

That research did not show any significant differences in physical health among the altruistic, but other research suggests being kind and generous can help keep the body well too.

Scientists have already demonstrated helping others induces physiological changes in the body. A study conducted for the Institute for the Advancement of Health in New York City more than 15 years ago examined the so-called "helper's high" -- a stress-busting rush people have after coming to the aid of others. Often compared to the calm but energized feeling that follows vigorous exercise, the high was credited to boosting self-esteem, energy levels and curbing aches and pains. Scientists suspect the high is triggered by endorphins, the body's natural pain-reducing chemicals.

Ester Sternberg, a Montreal specialist now working with the National Institutes of Health in Washington, said altruistic acts have been known to lower stress as long as they are not demanding and burdensome. Helping too much can bring on unhealthy stress.

"If you are chronically stressed then that is one of the important factors that contribute to you being more susceptible to getting sick with flus and viruses. On the other hand, if you do something that reduces that stress response -- like have a positive social interaction -- that you can imagine you might protect yourself from the bad effects from stress," said Dr. Sternberg, author of The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health & Emotions.

Being altruistic may have other biological benefits beyond slicing into stress, she said. But scientists such as herself are only now starting to look at what is happening inside the body to bring those benefits.

It is easier, she said, to study how stress makes you ill than how being loving and giving toward your fellow citizens can make you well. But she said science has already firmly established the effects of stress and researchers are now curious to find out the rest.

So are a lot of ordinary folk, especially in a post-Sept. 11 world.

"Because, perhaps, we are now all experiencing a much more frightening stressful world in a very palpable way from day to day, we are searching for ways to counter that. And what better way than love?" she said.

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