Small Acts Of Kindness

It's often easy and even real quick to do something small to help someone even though we don't do it often enough. 

I brought my son to get a haircut and held the glass door open for an elderly lady walking in after us. She was pleasantly surprised and said "A thousand blessings to you!"

Research shows that acts of kindness, no matter how small have a positive impact on the recipient. The researchers (Kumar and Epley, 2022) conducted a series of experiments with different acts of kindness, such as offering someone a ride home or covering the cost of someone's cup of coffee. 

In one such experiment, study participants at an ice skating rink on a cold winter day gave other skaters a cup of free hot chocolate. Then both parties were asked to rate how much the gesture was worth. The givers consistently undervalued how much the hot chocolate meant to the recipients.

Another recent paper published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Liu et al (2022), came to a similar conclusion about human behavior. The paper showed that we underestimate the power of reaching out to friends, family and colleagues. A quick call or text makes a big difference.

When it comes to doing nice things for others, a little goes a long way. Even though they may be small and simple, these kind gestures have immense underestimated power. That should encourage all of us to put in extra effort to make someone smile.

Now that you know this you can make someone's day a lot better. When in doubt, make that phone call, whatsapp message or offer the last cookie you have. It means a lot more than you think.

Here's wishing a very Happy New Year to all our patients and readers. 

References

Kumar A and Epley N (2022). A little Good Goes An Unpectedly Long Way: Underestimating The Positive Impact Of Kindness On Recipients. J Expt Psych. DOI: 10.1037/xe0001271.

Liu PS, Rim SY, Min L et al (2022). The Surprise Of Reaching Out: Appreciated More Than We Think. J Pers Soc Psych. DOI: 10.1037/pspi000402

Can Running Help Stop You From Eating Junk Food?

My personal favorite

Any of you having a craving for junk food? I do, all the time. In fact as I'm writing this, I am having a huge craving for potato chips.

How do I not succumb to this urge? Well, it seems that people whose brains have a strong dorsal-lateral prefontal cortex (DLPFC) section may have greater self control when it comes to eating behaviour.

What the heck is that?

Well, the DLPFC is near the front portion of your head in case you were wondering. Researchers zapped that area (with a coil placed near the subjects scalps near the hairline) to temporarily decrease brain activity in the DLPFC of the subjects in their study.

Guess what? When the participants were zapped in that area, they had more food cravings and also ate more junk food compared to subsequent tests when they received a sham zap.

With that zap, the participants were almost totally interested in high calorie snacks (Pringles potato chips and milk chocolate in the study).

In fact they mostly ignored the more healthy food options that were also available.

The researchers suggest that improving your DLPFC function can improve dietary self control, prevent obesity and may even help manage Type II diabetes.

How to you make your DLPFC function better? Studies have shown that running and other aerobic exercises are known to enhance DLPFC function. Getting adequate sleep and avoiding alcohol have also been shown to help.

Hmmm, this is strange. When I used to train a lot previously, I would often eat all chips, chocolate, drink lots of Coke etc. I thought all that training was supposed to help strengthen my DLPFC??

Now that I'm not racing and training much I would not dare to eat as much for fear of putting on too much weight. I guess after my accident, I've changed my eating habits as well.

Reference

Lowe CJ, Hall PA et al (2014). The Effects Of Continous Theta Burst Stimulation To The Left Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex On Executive Function, Food Cravings And Snack Consumption. Psych Med. Sep 76(7): 503-511. DOI: 1097/PSY.0000000000000090.