For good health, it is better to give, science suggests

One large study published this fall even seems to bear out the biblical wisdom that it is more blessed to give than to receive -- a message relevant to many as the holiday donation season begins.

"It might be too early to know whether increasing what we give will make us happier and healthier -- however, this is certainly the implication of the recent work in this area," said Stephanie L. Brown, a researcher at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

She and colleagues recently reported that, among a group of 423 elderly couples followed for five years, the people who reported helping others -- even if it was just giving emotional support to a spouse -- were only about half as likely to die as those who did not.

Also, in a study of more than 2,000 Presbyterians published this fall in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, behavioral scientist Carolyn E. Schwartz and colleagues reported that improved mental health seemed to be more closely linked to giving help than to receiving it.

"The sample was not a small sample -- this was a robust finding," Schwartz said. "The statistician and I were very careful to check all the alternative hypotheses, and it really did look like the benefits of giving to other people had a really substantial mental health benefit over and above the benefit of receiving."

What happens, it seems, "is when you open your heart to other people to listen and care about them, it changes the way you look at the world and you're happier," she said.

Similar findings are starting to pile up, said Stephen G. Post, a bioethics professor at Case Western Reserve University and president of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, a new center that encourages scientific study of altruism. He is planning a book to compile it all, he said.

The love institute, which has an initial endowment of $4 million, gave out $1.7 million in grants last year, and its interest in the subject means work on the health benefits of altruism is likely to proliferate, Schwartz and others said.

Little work has been done so far to determine what biological mechanism might link good deeds with good health. But it may have something to do with stress reduction, said Dr. Esther Sternberg, author of "The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions."

Researchers have begun to figure out why social contact is healthy. They have found that in lonely people, certain components of the stress response are more active, she said. If there is too much of the stress hormone cortisol floating around, immune cells become less able to fight germs.

"If there is going to be a mechanism for this, it's going to be through biological pathways that connect the brain and the immune system," she said. "It could be the stress response is reduced or could be other beneficial pathways that are enhanced."

One beneficial pathway that may be activated releases feel-good hormones called endorphins, she said.

If endorphins are activated, that could also help explain what many do-gooders describe as a kind of "helper's high."

Stephanie Hagyard, who volunteers through the group Boston Cares, knows about the good feeling of doing good. On Monday nights, she resists the urge to drag home from her insurance brokerage job, and goes instead to help serve dinner at a drop-in center for people with AIDS. Though she toils in the kitchen there, she leaves feeling refreshed.

"I feel better if I'm doing something good," said Hagyard, 30, of Belmont. Feeling better is not the reason she volunteers, but it is a distinct side effect, she said.

There is one important exception to the power of giving, Brown and others noted: When helping involves constant or exhausting demands, the toll it takes clearly outweighs any good it does.

Schwartz's study concluded that "feeling overwhelmed by others' demands had a stronger negative relationship with mental health than helping others had a positive one." Other studies found that exhausted givers fared worse health-wise than moderate givers.

Much more work needs to be done to pinpoint the effects of giving, researchers say; in particular, further studies must show whether giving improves health or if healthier people give more.

It is already possible to envision some of the work's implications, Post writes in the prospectus for his book.

"Imagine," he writes, "a psychiatrist or cardiologist recommending that a patient cultivate kindness and helping activities."

Carey Goldberg is reachable at goldberg@globe.com.