Platinum Health Challenge Day 11: Gratitude
Did you know that writing down 5 things you’re grateful for everyday can have significant beneficial affects on your brain and health? Let’s try it out! For Day 11, List 5 Things You are Grateful For.
The science is pretty solid, being grateful for the good things in your life — even the tiny ones — may be a way to train your brain to develop better habits and create a healthier future. It doesn’t do ALL the work for you, but it certainly seems like a good start. With that in mind, here are 5 brain changes that may result if you regularly practice gratitude:
1) Your Brain Floods with Reward Chemicals: Gratitude focused on a specific person — i.e. thanking other people for their behavior towards you is flooded with positive chemicals of a unique kind. The brain’s response to gratitude is to activate a reward center, one specifically targeted at boosting our bonds with other people.
2) Your Anxiety & Depression Symptoms May Lessen: Gratitude can help improve sleep, which can help reduce symptoms of anxiety. It’s also a challenge to negative thought patterns, which can be a core component of serious depression.
3) Your Hypothalamus Works Better: That means gratitude can impact this part of the brain that controls our metabolism, hunger and other natural bodily functions and help them work more smoothly.
4) You’re More Resistant to Stress: It impacts the body and brain’s ability to bounce back from seriously stressful events, like trauma, homelessness, grief or job loss. Studies show that people who are grateful recover more quickly from stressful situations.
5) You Fall Asleep More Easily: Grateful people fall asleep more easily, possibly because of the effects of stress reduction and better limbic system function (part of brain controlling instinct and mood as well as basic emotions (fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (hunger, sex, dominance, care of offspring).
Practicing gratitude doesn’t take much and the benefits are great. For our challenge, you can write them down for yourself of share them with us in a post. Either way, be sure to let us know you did the challenge by using the #platinumhealthchallenge.
How to Win:
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Raffles include prizes from WholeFoods, ButcherBox, Beautycounter, Squatty Potty, and more!
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To qualify for the raffles, post evidence of you and/or your family and friends completing the Challenge of the Day on social media.
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This could be a photo or text on facebook, instagram, or twitter, sharing the original Challenge of the Day post, or commenting on the blog post.
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Don’t have Social Media? Talk to Kristen about how to qualify.
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Be sure to include the #platinumhealthchallenge so we can find you!
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To qualify for the Weekly Raffle Drawing, complete 5/7 challenges for the week (Sun – Sat). To qualify for the Grand Prize Raffle drawn at our Patient Appreciation Party on March 12 complete 13/21 challenges throughout the month.
**Weekly Raffles will be drawn on Sundays. To win you must be able to come by the practice to pickup your prize. We will not be mailing items.**
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