Essentials: The Science of Gratitude & How to Build a Gratitude Practice

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today we are talking all about the science of gratitude. There's now a wealth of data showing that having an effective gratitude practice can impact a huge number of health variables, both mental health and physical health. in positive ways.

However, in researching this episode, I was completely surprised as to what constitutes an effective gratitude practice. I, I think like many of you, would have thought that an effective gratitude practice simply involves writing down a few things or many things that we're grateful for, or thinking about those, or really making an effort to somaticize or feel some of the elements of gratitude while writing out that list or thinking about that list. It turns out that in Effective gratitude practice doesn't resemble that at all. The neuroimaging data, the physiological data looking at things like inflammatory markers, other studies purely looking at the psychology and the long and short-term effects of an effective gratitude practice point to a completely different approach to using gratitude to positively impact health metrics.

There are studies showing that performing a gratitude practice twice or three times or even just once a week can lead to a pervasive, a long-lasting impact on subjective well-being. People report feeling happier, more meaning, joy, even awe for their life experience, simply in response to adding a gratitude practice. But there are additional benefits of a gratitude practice. There are studies showing that a regular gratitude practice

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