The Science of Gratitude & How to Build a Gratitude Practice

Huberman Lab

Scicomm Media

Science, Health & Fitness, Life Sciences

4.8 • 26.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2021

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, I discuss the science of gratitude, which has been shown in peer-reviewed studies to have tremendous positive effects on mental and physical health. I explain, however, that most commonly used gratitude practices are ineffective (such as gratitude lists). The key elements of highly effective gratitude practices are described, including the essential need for story (narrative), receiving or perceiving gratitude rather than giving it, and the role that theory of mind plays in this context. I also discuss why we can't simply make up feelings of gratitude and how reluctance undermines the process. I also explain the neural circuit mechanisms that underlie the reductions in fear and increases in motivation and lowering of inflammatory chemicals that effective narrative-based gratitude can trigger. Throughout the episode, I use the science of gratitude to design a brief but highly effective protocol. For the full show notes, visit hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1 (Athletic Greens): https://athleticgreens.com/huberman InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/huberman Thesis: https://takethesis.com/huberman Supplements from Momentous https://www.livemomentous.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00 Introduction: Gratitude Science & Surprises (00:01:50 Controlling Heart Rate with Story (00:04:33 Sponsors (00:09:11 Major, Long-Lasting Benefits of Gratitude Practice (00:12:20 Prosocial vs. Defensive Thinking, Behaviors, & Neural Circuits (00:17:50 Why We All Need an Effective Gratitude Practice (00:21:22 Neurochemistry & Neural Circuits of Gratitude (00:25:10 Prefrontal Cortex Set Context (00:30:10 Ineffective Gratitude Practices; Autonomic Variables (00:34:55 Key Features of Effective Gratitude Practices: Receiving Thanks & Story (00:42:30 Theory of Mind Is Key (00:45:50 Building Effective Gratitude Practices: Adopting Narratives, Duration (00:52:28 Narratives That Shift Brain-Body Circuits (00:56:15 You Can’t Lie About Liking Something; Reluctance In Giving (00:59:55 How Gratitude Changes Your Brain: Reduces Anxiety, Increases Motivation (01:03:00 5 Minutes (Is More Than Enough), 3X Weekly, Timing Each Day (01:05:44 Empathy & Anterior Cingulate Cortex (01:07:35 Reducing Inflammation & Fear with Gratitude (01:10:56 Serotonin, Kanna/Zembrin (01:16:00 Neuroplasticity, Pharmacology, Brain Machine Interfaces (01:18:50 The Best Gratitude Practices: & How To, My Protocol (01:24:25 Subscribe & Feedback, Supporting Sponsors, Supplements Title Card Photo Credit: Mike Blabac Disclaimer

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
0:08.8	I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and
0:12.2	Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are talking all about the science of gratitude.
0:17.1	In part we're doing this because of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, which of course is all about giving thanks gratitude,
0:23.4	but also because there's now a wealth of data showing that having an effective gratitude practice
0:28.8	can impact a huge number of health variables, both mental health and physical health in
0:35.2	positive ways, things like cardiovascular health, things like relationships, things like mental health, things like physical and
0:41.7	cognitive performance, and these are not small effects. These are very large positive effects.
0:46.7	However, in researching this episode, I was completely surprised as to what constitutes an effective gratitude practice.
0:53.9	I, I think like many of you would have thought that an effective gratitude practice simply involves writing down a few things or many things that we're grateful for.
1:01.9	We're thinking about those or
1:04.8	really making an effort to some matisize or feel some of the
1:09.7	elements of gratitude while writing out that list or thinking about that list. It turns out that an effective gratitude practice doesn't resemble that at all.
1:18.0	The neuroimaging data, the physiological data, looking at things like inflammatory markers,
1:22.4	other studies purely looking at the psychology and the long and short-term effects of an effective gratitude practice point to a completely different approach to using gratitude to positively impact health metrics.
1:34.4	Fortunately, these are things that we can all do very easily. Some of them are actually fun. You can do them in a variety of context.
1:42.4	So today we're going to talk about the science of effective gratitude practices and we're going to describe what those are and how you can incorporate them into your life.
1:49.4	Before we dive into today's topic, I just want to highlight a particularly interesting set of findings from the literature.
1:55.4	This is a study that came out in the journal Cell Report, Cell Press Journal, Excellent Journal. It's very relevant to today's topic.
2:01.4	In fact, we're going to spend more time with this paper a little bit later in the episode.
2:05.4	The study involved having subjects listen to a story.
2:09.4	The subjects are all listening to the same story, but those subjects are not listening to it together.
	...

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