VOLUNTEERING FOR MATURE ADULTS

    Volunteering helps others & boosts your own health at the same time

When you do good things for others, you do good things for your health. You may also be doing good things for the health of your community, research now shows.

An Ontario study on the health benefits of volunteering reveals that it not only improves self-esteem and combats social isolation, but also reduces the impact of stress on the body, lowering blood pressure and even bolstering the immune system. And in a review of volunteering and mortality among older adults, volunteering was linked to lower mortality rates among the elderly.

Benefits for seniors

Indeed, for older Canadians, volunteering appears to give new meaning to life, reducing anxiety and depression and increasing life satisfaction, writes Dr. Mark J. Yaffe of the Department of Family Medicine at McGill University, Montreal.

Volunteering also helps people deal with the inevitable losses that occur with age, he points out. These include retirement, loss of social contacts, death of friends or relatives, and geographic separation from adult children and grandchildren.

There are other potential benefits when seniors volunteer, says Dr. Yaffe, including:

• enhanced image of older adults in society
• improved personal self-regard
• increased mental functioning
• reduced selfconcern.

"Volunteering may produce a 'win-win' situation," writes Dr. Yaffe. "Society benefits and the person volunteering may personally benefit. What a perfect prescription for health promotion and maintenance."

Helps reduce stress

But volunteering doesn't just produce health benefits for the elderly. According to Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson, known for his work on the relaxation response (the body's ability to shift into a deep state of rest), the health benefits of doing good things for others are similar to those experienced by anyone who practices yoga, spirituality and meditation, namely a slowing down of heart rate and a decrease in blood pressure.

The key may lie in the sense of calmness that comes from helping others, also known as the "helper's high". These altruistic feelings reinforce the sense that one's life has a purpose. In turn, this enhances self-esteem, which then provides the motivation for a person to make better lifestyle choices.

Builds community
Importantly, volunteering helps keep groups of people strong by developing community ties, an important element of healthy, integrated and secure communities. By encouraging interaction between people living in a community, volunteering fosters trust, co-operation and cohesion in which members watch out for and support each other. For example, a widowed senior, who is a retired teacher, helps the kids next door with their homework. In return, they shovel her driveway in the winter and mow her lawn in the summer.

Benefits beyond health
The benefits of volunteering also appear to extend beyond health. In 2000, the National Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating found that people were able to describe the benefits they gained from volunteering:

• 79% of volunteers said that their volunteer activities helped them with their interpersonal skills, such as understanding people better, motivating others and dealing with difficult situations;
• 68% of volunteers said that volunteering helped them develop better communication skills;
• 63% reported increased knowledge about issues related to their volunteering.

Reprinted with the permission of the Canadian Health Network (CHN), a national, bilingual Internet-based health information service on how to stay healthy and prevent disease and injury.  This article was prepared for the CHN by Kristin Jenkins, a writer and editor who specializes in health and medicine (www.canadian-health-network.ca).