Helping others makes you live longer, study says

As the holidays wrap up, you may be tapped out on family interactions and want to do nothing but hibernate on the couch with a magazine. But there’s a compelling reason to bring the grandkids to the zoo or help your adult son install shelves in his basement, a new study shows.

Researchers tracked more than 500 people, aged 70 to 103, for nearly 20 years. They found that people who occasionally cared for grandchildren or helped out adult children were likely to live longer than those who weren’t active caregivers for others. Half of the people who weren’t regularly helping others had died within five years of the start of the study.

“This pattern suggests that there is a link not only between helping and beneficial health effects, but also between helping and mortality,” the researchers write in Evolution and Human Behavior.

The study examined a number of caregiving relationships, including non-custodial grandparenting. Those who occasionally cared for their grandkids had a mortality rate 37 percent lower than grandparents who never took care of their grandkids.

“These associations held after controlling for physical health, age, socioeconomic status and various characteristics of the children and grandchildren,” the study authors write. “Furthermore, the effect of caregiving extended to non-grandparents and to childless older adults who helped beyond their families.”

Among study participants who cared for friends, about half lived for seven years after their initial interview. Those who didn’t help out other people in their social network only lived about four years longer.

Although the research can’t definitively say taking care of someone else will always make you live longer, it demonstrates positive aspects of helping out other people. Having a wider social circle and caring for others is associated with positive emotions that can help improve overall health and minimize the impact of stress.

This story was originally published December 28, 2016 at 10:59 AM with the headline "Helping others makes you live longer, study says."