Healing Through Gratitude: A Neuroscientific Perspective

 In this episode of the Stance for Health Podcast, Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth explore the profound impact of gratitude on brain health and longevity. They discuss how gratitude activates parts of the brain that enhance emotional intelligence and resilience while promoting healing. 

The conversation dives into how practicing gratitude can rewire the brain, fostering positive connections and reducing negative ones, ultimately leading to a more robust ability to process emotions and make moral decisions. They provide insights into integrating gratitude practices into daily routines to cultivate a grateful disposition and improve overall health. 

Follow us on Instagram.

Follow us on Facebook.

Visit our website. 

Please rate us and write a review! 

Transcript

Dr. Rodney: Welcome to Stance for Health podcast with Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth, where becoming healthy is not complicated. Control your health by focusing on six areas of life that we teach you so you finally have the energy you have to do what you want instead of being a victim of your age. I have over 20 years experience working as a chiropractor and Karen is an author, speaker, and longevity coach. We've seen how a tiny change in your habits today can open up your life to a powerful future. Start today and take your Stance for Health.

Hi and welcome to Stance for Health podcast. I'm Dr. Rodney, standing next to Karen Sebastian, Hope Lady Wirth.

Karen: Hi.

Dr. Rodney: And we are excited to bring to you a sort of a best of when it comes to giving thanks and how it can actually affect your overall health, how it can affect longevity and so many other things.

Of all the things that we've researched here, what has stood out to you the most?

Karen: What stands out the most to me is the power of gratitude in healing.

And I just want to get into that. But before we do that, let's talk about your best definition of gratitude. What do you consider gratitude to be?

Dr. Rodney: Gratitude, I would say, isn't necessarily being happy about the circumstance or being grateful for the circumstances. Being grateful in the circumstance.

Karen: Oh, that's good. I like that.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

Karen: Well, basically, let's break it down even further. What does the word grateful mean?

Dr. Rodney: I love how you break down the word because you think of being overflowing with full or so thankful and grateful are synonymous.

Karen: They are. And the reason that we're doing this, as you know, if you live in the United States, Thanksgiving is coming this week, or you may be listening to it after Thanksgiving.

And that seems to be a time of year where people put posts out there on social media what they're grateful for. But so often we just go back to regular,

which is we stop feeling that sense or expressing. That's the part I want to talk about.

So would you take this as a good definition that gratitude is an awareness of the good things that are happening.

Dr. Rodney: In your life,

even if there aren't any good things happening in your life right now, there are things either to look forward to or things to be grateful for that have happened?

Karen: And that's a good point, because some people want everything to be just so in order to be grateful, in order to express thanks.

But I think that's kind of the emotional side, just a fleeting emotion. But what about a trait of gratefulness,

the trait that says I'm a grateful person and I'm going to experience It,

I'm going to cultivate it. I'm going to basically have that warm sense of appreciation for everyone that comes into my life.

That can be hard.

Dr. Rodney: I think it was a friend of ours that we have in common that said, you know, some people are. You're grateful for them,

some when they come, some when they go.

Karen: Yes. And so that's part of what we want to talk about is that there is something happening in your brain. And that's the exciting part.

The research from Frontiers of psychology did MRIs and there were areas of the brain that increased activity when people were expressing gratitude.

And I just find that to be so fascinating because most of us think, okay, yes, I'm grateful, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah.

But that something could light up in your brain explains that warmth of feeling when you express gratitude when you are thankful, doesn't it?

Dr. Rodney: Yeah, I like and for so many reasons, because of the way you can actually look at this.

Karen: Can say we're looking at our brain model. It looks like a cauliflower in a way.

Dr. Rodney: It does.

Karen: Raw broccoli. Yeah.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

So like little worms that have woven and layered on top.

This particular area that we're talking about is the anterior cingulate cortex. If you were to cut your brain in half, and let's just imagine that you could do that.

You'll see it just under the top layers of the frontal cortex, the gyrus and sulcate located on top. It is in the front part of the brain.

Many consider the limbic system more of the emotional system. But this is kind of the bridge between. Or a sandwich almost like the peanut butter or the jelly between pieces of bread.

Karen: I like that.

Dr. Rodney: And it's, it's a really cool. Because it's sort of governing emotion. So it's an act of gratefulness when you take time to give thanks.

It's using your, your prefrontal cortex, perhaps your frontal cortex. Going back to what you said originally, that warm feeling that you have, it's because you chose and you know what.

Karen: Happens when the brain is stimulated there. It can play a role in how you make moral decisions and judge other people. Have you experience that when you're judging someone else and saying, oh, they shouldn't be doing that, you don't feel very happy, you don't feel very grateful.

And so that is one of the areas that's involved in self processing. So the way that you're judging others is the way you judge yourself.

Dr. Rodney: Hmm. A lot of Times we become the judge, jury, and executioners. Picture that I get of this part of the brain is the judging someone, not harshly, but judging them rightly.

Karen: Yes.

Dr. Rodney: And seeing the value that that human being has simply because they're a creation of God.

Karen: It happened when they were doing these MRIs.

They showed that the active practice of gratitude increased the neuron density, and that led to greater emotional intelligence. And emotional intelligence is how you relate to others, how you listen to them, how you understand them. It's a very important part of resilient, healthy mental processes.

Dr. Rodney: So I hope you don't mind saying that again for the. For the sake of our audience and for me, when you said what you  did about neurons,

Karen: The active practice of gratitude. So that meant that they were actively writing notes or reading notes of gratitude, basically increased the neuron density there, and they saw that it can lead to greater emotional intelligence, which is how you relate to people.

Dr. Rodney: Hmm.

We were on a kick here just these last couple days, three days, really, probably dating back to last week. But it was when a friend of ours, that same friend I was referring to earlier, that had the quote about gratefulness. This had to do with the rewiring of the brain in terms of positive connections. Now, so this I'm. I'm referencing in some ways, probably a different study, but it had to do with. They were actually using the scripture, 2nd Corinthians 10:5, which said, you're basically taking captive every lofty thing that exalts itself against the name of the Lord. So this is similar to that scripture, but what that scripture did is when you take that thought captive. So this is more of an act of gratefulness rather than taking a negative thought captive. This is birthing or incubating or fostering.

Karen: And I love that word, practice of gratitude. So it's not just a fleeting, oh, thank you for that, but feeling that sense that we were describing earlier, basically strengthening those connections between the good things and the feelings that you had towards that person.

And it brings us back to the neuroscience research, what is called Hebb's Law,

Neurons that fire together, wire together.

Dr. Rodney: The study that you showed me on that scripture verse, that actually showed the negative connection or the results of a negative connection or a negative thought that actually began to be depleted, probably producing negative chemicals, brain chemicals, or an inordinate amount of cortisol or excess dopamine or something along those lines. This would be. Instead of it being a negative connection producing negative chemicals, this would be a positive connection producing positive chemicals.

Karen: Absolutely. Have you ever wondered at the resilience and health of certain people. And I use my dad as an example all the time I think he's one of the most positive people I know. And yet he went through some hard things and quickly forgot them and still reached out to the people that were hurtful to him in ministry. And that resilience is what I think kept his brain going. Rewired. Because gratitude rewires the brain.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah, it sure does -or the better.

All the things that you think of with those warm fuzzies could be easily like, you know, serotonin or oxytocin cause those feel good chemicals.

Karen: I love when it says here about the practice of gratitude, which is what we do on the way home. What was the best thing? What are you grateful for today?

What are good things that happened? And sometimes it can take a flipping of something that wasn't so good. But we're going, oh, okay. That wasn't what we would have chosen and yet that's what I love that about resilience.

I want us to talk next about how we talk to our own bodies about the body healing itself. Because that is research as a Harvard study where the people in this study would say kind things to themselves improved exponentially better than the ones that were mad at their bodies or saying, this isn't working. The ones that were saying, thank you, body.

When I read this research, oh, probably about a year ago, every time I sneeze, I go, "Thank you, body, for taking whatever was come, trying to get it up into my system and encapsulating it in some snot, and then giving me a sneeze so I can get it expelled and go out.

And that is so fascinating because I think I've only had one cold since then. And that one was because I was exposed to mold and dampness.

Dr. Rodney: This act of gratefulness to our body just gets the higher brain center. We say higher because it's closer to the surface. In the frontal cortex and prefrontal cortex and now anterior cingulate cortex, you're engaging the lower brain centers. We say lower because it's deeper limbic systems, the perception of self and the perception of what is true.

Either the lies we believe or the stories we've been telling that may or may not be true. And so this retells it in the way that you could say, on, you know, on earth as it is in heaven. Don't you think?

Karen: I do, because I believe that the creator of our body has given us an incredible mechanism, an incredible body that can heal itself if it's given the right terrain. And I think so often we forget that and we feed ourselves bad things.

We indulge when we shouldn't. We have lack of sleep. All of the components that we talk about here at Stance, Chiropractic, basically all can wire together and we can appreciate the good things that our body is doing.

Dr. Rodney: So I would give resource to this and to actually say that the act of this, the writing down, the rewiring is almost like doing what Caroline Leaf calls brain detox.

Karen: Yes.

Dr. Rodney: And another reference that you could look into is some of the work of Candace Perk as well as Howard Doyt, How the Brain Heals. So those are three cross references to this. And you'd find some fascinating information, any one of those three.

Karen: I love that the brain is so resilient and studies on people who have experienced strokes. The body can rewire, the brain can rewire. And I think that it is significant.

We are living in a society where there has never been more anxiety.

It's like we are informed of everything bad that's happening and anxiety was put into us that sense those hormones were put into us to keep us safe.

But now what happens is fear can set in and then that releases the all the hormones that create the fight or flight. And basically we feel insecure and we start questioning ourselves and coping mechanisms to start failing.

I love what gratitude can do. There's a book by Alex Korb called Grateful Brain, and it says that your brain becomes conditioned to function on what it repeats.

So when a person is repeating what's not going to work, what they're worried about, the adverse outcomes, everything that's terrible that's going on, which by the way, is a lot of people, basically their brain rewires so that all they're looking at is the negative.

The good news on that is you can focus on the positive through gratitude and you can flip that because your brain does not have a positive and a negative at the same second. If I'm thinking a positive thought, there's not a negative one in there.

Dr. Rodney: So we were having a conversation and somehow we got on this subject and I was asking Karen, I said, "So how did you become The Hope Lady?"

How do you do that? And so she has a testimony about that.

Karen: I do.

Many years ago, I was the most negative person you would ever meet. And my wake up call was that I was diagnosed with lupus and I decided something needed to change. And I decided the only thing in that situation that I found myself in that I could change was me. The only thing I can control is me. And I decided I would be the most positive person in any room I was ever in.

Now that took a lot of moving from the negative to the positive and flipping the gratitude switch, I like to call it the hope switch. To say, okay, that doesn't say that everything is great, but good can come out of it. But at the same time now it's almost to the point of bouncing back quickly from a negative with a positive.

Dr. Rodney: So you have some hows on how to do this.

Karen: I do basically think another thought, have another thought.

Dr. Rodney: As Graham Cooke would say.

Karen: Yes.

Dr. Rodney: Yep.

Karen: When you're dealing with grief, I think that was what was so wonderful to have been through that experience and to be on the other side with the gratitude.

When you're dealing with grief, gratitude is incredible because it can bring that ray of hope in the darkest times. And basically you just begin to remember the good things.  You begin to remember it was hard. And yet the resilience, that bounce back ability, that sense of, okay,  I'm not done living and I am grateful for the people that helped. I'm grateful for just everything.

1. Look around the room.

That's the first thing to do. Count as many things in any given room that you're grateful for. So we're in our office right now.

I'm grateful for the clock that's telling me it's almost time to finish.

What are you grateful for in this room.

Dr. Rodney: I have a shelf with different accolades on it. The probably the high points of different accolades. And I was actually looking at the one on the far left. It already dates back five years.

Karen: Wow.

Dr. Rodney: And they called us the provider of the month.

Karen: And it was on our discount plan.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah. So that, that's one.

Karen: We could just keep going.

Dr. Rodney: We could.

Karen: So if you need a boost to gratitude, start going into any given room in your house and say, what am I grateful for in this room? 

2. Keep a gratitude journal.

And this is a place where you write one to three things every day that you're grateful for. Or you could have it at work if that's a better place for you. But what are you grateful for? We do it. We do an audible on the way home.

What are you grateful for?

3. Focus on the bests of the day

What was great today? What went well? What was our highlight? What did we enjoy?

And so that can help you with your family. Talk to them about this. What are some things that they feel enthusiastic about? Well, what was a great thing?

Number four,

4. Write a gratitude letter to a past mentor or teacher.

And that is a challenge. I'm going to give you to write one to your former boss and I'm going to write one to one of my former bosses as well.

When they did this study, the practice, gratitude was the ones where it lit up were the people that had gone into detail with that. They didn't say thank you. They gave specific details of that.

And it's better if you do it by hand, even though we can't read your writing well. But what did they do? How did it affect you, how they made you feel, and why is it important?

So that's fun.

I just want us to express to you today how grateful we are for you. If you've gotten this far in the podcast,

we're standing here looking at each other, but we're really doing this for you.

Begin to be thankful for everything in your life.

Thankful to your body. Even pain can be something to be thankful for because it brings you to the chiropractor and you get adjusted and you no longer have the pain, the challenges that you have.

Be grateful.

Dr. Rodney: Really love this topic.

Karen: Me too.

Yeah, sticking with it. Resilience and hope.

Not giving up in the tough times because you know that the end is going to be good.

May not be right now.

And for those of you who are listening to this and you may be alone, you may be mourning the loss of someone through this season.

Reach out to us.

We mean it. We'll pray for you. We know what that feels like.

We have been through the grief.

We still experience it.

I'm getting a wave right now,

but we want you to know that there is always hope and we are grateful for you.

Dr. Rodney: Can't think of a better place to to draw this to a close.

We're doing this 100% because we want to help you take your stance, your stance for health.

Thanks for listening.

Thank you for joining us at Stance for Health podcast, where getting healthy and staying that way are not as complicated as you might think.

Subscribe now and discover steps and small changes that can increase your energy and open the door to vibrant health and longevity. Longevity.

This podcast has been helpful. Please write a review. We'll see you next time.