Forgiving for Your Health
By Meghan Yost, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent
February 8, 2008
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Forgiveness is not only important for your emotional and mental wellbeing -- it can also significantly improve your physical health.
A study at Florida Hospital in Orlando, Fla., found learning effective ways to forgive others can actually lower your blood pressure. Researchers studied patients who had been suffering from high blood pressure for two years or more. They performed a preliminary test to measure each patient’s level of anger. Patients were then taught lessons on forgiveness and their blood pressure was recorded six times a week for eight weeks.
“By week eight, over 80 percent of those who entered the program with high levels of anger, had lowered their blood pressure to the normal range,” Dick Tibbits, Ph.D., Chief People Officer at Florida Hospital, told Ivanhoe. “Those people with normal or low levels of anger had very little impact on their blood pressure.”
High blood pressure in relation to anger is a cyclical event, Dr. Tibbits says. Holding on to a hurtful memory causes someone to repeatedly experience the painful emotions associated with it. This leads to higher stress levels, eliciting a response in the body like increased heart rate, high blood pressure, or even digestive problems.
“A lot of organ systems in the body react to cortisol, the hormone released when we’re stressed,” Dr. Tibbits explained. “By lowering stress by giving people a better way of dealing with it, the driver of high blood pressure is removed.”
Dr. Tibbits says he believes most of the time people don’t forgive, it’s not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know how to. He offers this advice: before reacting to a situation, take a moment to pause and reflect. Then decide how you will react. Doing so provides a more effective method of dealing with hurtful situations, one that breaks the emotional trap of anger.
SOURCE: Ivanhoe interview with Dick Tibbits, Ph.D., and Forgiveness: Healing Ourselves, Our Communities, Our World conference, Orlando, Fla., Feb. 7, 2008
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