11.01.2023

JANUARY 11 - INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE WORD "THANK YOU!"

On today's date, many countries around the world celebrate the International Day of the most beautiful word - "Thank you!". A wonderful occasion to express our gratitude to family, friends, colleagues and anyone who made our day better.

Experts say that words of gratitude can warm and calm people mentally. As long as they are spoken from the heart, of course.

Receiving a "Thank you" after a favor or good deed automatically makes us feel better. So don't forget to reward anyone who earns the magic word.

Scientists believe that verbal, written or ritual expressions of gratitude have a profound positive effect on us. Just saying the word "thank you" releases feel-good chemicals in our body, such as dopamine and serotonin, which make us feel happy and relaxed.

Both the person expressing their gratitude and the one to whom we thank feel the beneficial influence of oxytocin, the love hormone that is abundant in the bodies of couples in love.

"If gratitude were a drug, it would be the best-selling drug in the world," says Dr. Murali Doraiswamy of Duke University. "It has a beneficial effect on every important organ in our body."

Stress hormones like cortisol also decrease with the simple act of expressing gratitude. Scientists from the University of "Kent" in the USA have measured the exact effect of expressing this good feeling. Steve Toepfer and his students wrote thank-you letters to their acquaintances, in which they expressed their gratitude for something important in their lives, not just for a gift received or a nice party.

Comparing the "grateful" with the control group of students, who had not thanked anyone for anything, showed that in the former, the level of general satisfaction with life significantly increased, and the symptoms of depression significantly weakened.

However, it is important to express true gratitude, the scientists emphasize - our body recognizes it as a very positive event and responds accordingly with its gratitude to your action. Its "reward" systems are designed to ignore insignificant events as "background noise" but mark the important ones with a strong response that makes us feel happy and lowers the stress that harms our physical health.

"If you want to be happier and healthier, take 15 minutes to write someone a thank-you note," advises Toepfer. This is how you direct your brain's attention to the thought that something good has happened. This will cause it to respond with a wave of neurotransmitters – chemicals that help our body know whether we are feeling good or bad.

The effect is so significant that it can be used in the treatment of mild to moderate depression, Doraiswamy claims. Simple politeness causes our brains to make us "happy" with a dose of pleasure hormones.