Altruism lengthens life

The reasons why a person offers their voluntary help impact more on their Health that in the same act of altruistic support, he revealed a study.

According to the information published by the agency Notimex, the results of the investigation of the University of Michigan (UM) revealed that people who volunteer because they want to help others have longer lives than those who do not.

Sara Konrath , lead author of the study and UM psychologist, explained that "people volunteer for a wide range of reasons, from leaving home and meeting more people, to doing something good for those who need help and groups that support them. "

This new research concluded that it is not enough to be a volunteer, but to have real purposes altruistic so that this benefit really exists.

For the study, published on the Internet in the magazine Health Psychology, the researchers analyzed data from Longitudinal Wisconsin Study, which follows a random sample of graduates in 1,957 from state high schools.

The data used in the analysis (collected in 2004) included 3 thousand 376 men and women of about 65 years. These showed that 57% of those interviewed had done at least one volunteer job in the previous 10 years.

In 2008 the participants were contacted, and only 2.3% of the volunteers had died, compared with 4.3% of those who had not done any work voluntary .

With respect to effort Volunteer of these people, only 1.8% of those who were regularly volunteers had died, compared to 2.5% of those who did it occasionally. Therefore, specialists determined that the reasons for volunteering have an effect on the mortality .

When evaluating the participants regarding the importance of the reasons for their work voluntary , it was found that to the extent that the reasons for their action oriented towards others were more important, it was more likely that they would continue to live after four years.

The study ensures that concern for others leads people to act in the same system as mothers, which includes a set of thoughts , emotions Y neurological circuits Y psychophysiological .

The researcher argued that "it helps to deactivate the responses to stress and activate hormones , such as oxytocin , which restores physiological function . Basically, the stress of the person who provides watch out and its wellness ”.


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