Volunteer for good health: giving improves health benefits

The Australian Good Health magazine (December 2011) highlights the health benefits of philanthropy and volunteering. When people donate money or time, their health improves. This can include humanitarian and environmental donations, medical donations including being a blood donor or organ donor, community volunteering, involvement in children’s organizations, caring for animals, or involvement in sporting associations.

Australians have always been known for volunteering their time. A 2006 study found that the portion of adult Australians who volunteer increased from 24% in 1995 to 41% in 2004, and the number of hours volunteered increased by more than 50% during this period. This is one of the highest volunteer rates in the world.

Apart from the “helper’s high” (a sense of satisfaction) that volunteers experience – shown on MRI brain scans – because “focusing on others causes a shift from our unhealthy preoccupations with ourselves and reduces the stress-related wear and tear on the body and soul” - volunteering has shown other benefits. Kindness, particularly regular acts of kindness, is said to stimulate the vagus nerve which controls the heart rate, therefore reducing blood pressure and inflammation.

Health benefits of philanthropy and volunteering time, includes – (1) alleviating depression in both the short and longer terms, including lowering the level of depression; (2) being more satisfied with life, with a stronger will to live; (3) alleviating anxiety with fewer psychological symptoms caused by psychological conditions; (4) extending the longevity of a person’s life; (5) stimulating the hormone oxytocin which protects hardening of the arteries, dilates blood vessels, reduces blood pressure, and helps the heart to regenerate after damage; and (6) general overall happiness.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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