The Power of Gratitude.

In the early 1990s, one of the great medical research exercises of modern times took place.

It became known as the Nunn Study.

Some 700 American nuns, all members of the school sisters of Notre Dame in the United States,

agreed to allow their records to be accessed by a research team

investigating the process of aging and Alzheimer's disease.

At the start of the study, the participants were aged between 75 and 102.

What gave this study its unusual longitudinal scope is that in 1930 the nuns, then in their

twenties, had been asked by the Mother Superior to write a brief autobiographical account of their

life and their reasons for entering the convent. These documents were now analyzed by the researchers using a specially divided coding system

to register, among other things, positive and negative emotions.

By annually assessing the nun's current state of health, the researchers were able to test

whether their emotional state in 1930 had an

effect on their health some 60 years later. Because they'd all lived a very similar lifestyle during

these six decades, they formed an ideal group for testing hypotheses about the relationship

between emotional attitudes and health.

The results published in 2001 were startling. The more positive emotions like contentment,

gratitude, happiness, hope, and love, the nuns expressed in their autobiographical notes,

the more likely they were to be alive and well 60 years later.

The difference was as much as seven years in life expectancy.

So remarkable was this finding that it has led since then to a new field of gratitude research,

as well as a deepening understanding of the impact of emotions on physical

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