Boost Your Immunity with Kindness
What’s more infectious than a virus? A contagion that makes everyone feel good
Here we are in 2022, still experiencing a pandemic. Not only do we continue to be susceptible to the latest strain of COVID-19 but our immune systems are working overtime to fight off stress caused by ongoing anxiety. It even has a name: COVID Stress Syndrome. (It’s real, folks!)
Ready for some good news? Together we can make a difference by shifting our focus to an even more contagious condition: kindness.
Unlike a virus, kindness is spread by a natural phenomenon called mirror neurons, which are located throughout the brain. These special cells transmit neurochemical impulses and commands within our central nervous system as well as to our muscles.
When you witness someone else performing an altruistic act, mirror neurons are activated. Likewise, when you perform a kindness, it flips the switch for those around you to respond in kind (literally!) Mirror neurons are the reason human beings can empathize with one another and why we are biologically wired for connection.
The benefits multiple from there. Don’t believe me? Here are three more ways acts of kindness can increase your overall health and emotional wellbeing.
1. Kindness naturally boosts your immune system
Kindness has the power to affect how another person feels which ultimately affects their internal biochemistry. While stress causes cortisol, an immune-suppressing hormone, to be released in the bloodstream, acts of kindness release dopamine and serotonin — the same hormones often used to counteract mental health conditions.
2. Kindness generates a contact high (and it’s legal)
Speaking of dopamine and serotonin production, did you know that they regulate your body, help you sleep soundly, improve your memory, improve your metabolism, and help with your emotional well-being?
when you extend random acts of kindness, your brain boosts the production levels of both dopamine and serotonin which leaves you and the recipient of your kindness feeling in an elevated state of mind.
(This is where the common phrase, “helper’s high” comes from. When you naturally try to help another, your dopamine and serotonin levels increase.)
3. Kindness improves heart health
There’s another hormone called oxytocin that is responsible for helping maintain healthy blood pressure, which protects the heart. Oxytocin is naturally released in the body when we are generous, friendly, and forming social bonds. So opening your heart up and extending kindness outward to another human being actually keeps your heart healthy and helps others do the same.
So if you think small acts of kindness don’t matter in this crazy world, think again.
Just give it a try. You might become the next kindness super spreader!
Are you a kindness super spreader? Light us up at info@wewave.life and tell us how! We’ll publish your story here.
Read more about the neuroscience of kindness.
