It pays to be a volunteer

By helping others, you help yourself: volunteering supports both physical and mental health, Canadian scientists have found. “This opens up new ways to improve personal health and the social orientation of society,” write psychologists at the University of British Columbia. After selecting 106 graduating students from Vancouver schools, they divided them into two groups - those who regularly participated in one or another volunteer activity for 10 weeks, and those who remained on the waiting list for such work all this time.

Before the experiment began, the researchers collected the necessary information about the health and emotional state of the schoolchildren. A range of physical and mental indicators were recorded, from weight to self-esteem. Then, for 10 weeks, the first group studied with elementary school students for an hour every day, and the second group studied their usual teenage activities. Finally, scientists checked and compared their vital signs.

The effect was amazing: if at the beginning of the experiment no statistically significant difference was found between the groups, then after almost 4 months the volunteers showed noticeably better numbers in almost everything. Their blood levels of cholesterol and interleukin 6, a marker protein for inflammation, fell, although levels of C-reactive protein, another indicator of inflammation, remained almost unchanged. Even the body mass index has approached the optimal level.

The authors note that volunteers who showed the greatest empathy for those they help also demonstrated the greatest improvement in their own health. Perhaps, voluntary help to others can be considered a kind of physical education: it allows you to improve the health of not only society as a whole, but also each individual.