PUMPING IRONY: Healthy Helpfulness

My octogenarian pal Leo gave up his car keys a few years ago when Parkinson’s made driving a highly questionable endeavor. He’s been relying upon friends to ferry him around to his many and varied destinations ever since. During the early phase of his chauffeured life, I would drive across town to pick him up for our monthly lunches and deposit him back at his apartment after we’d eaten, enjoyed espressos at a nearby coffee shop, and stopped at the office to make some copies of news clippings (he’s an inveterate collector and distributor of printed matter). It seemed at the time to be more of a social excursion than a service.

More recently, however, those monthly forays have expanded to include a trip to the grocery store and maybe a stop at the pharmacy. And it’s not uncommon now to get a phone call from him out of the blue lamenting the emptiness of his pantry: “Just need a quick trip to the store, Boss.” One night, he desperately needed me to give him a ride home from a downtown restaurant after the car belonging to his evening chauffeur was towed from a no-parking zone. These trips are more service than social.

I’m not complaining, mind you; it feels good to help my old buddy. And there’s a fair amount of evidence suggesting that such charitable efforts may benefit the giver as well as the receiver. Recent research, in fact, argues that volunteering our services — at certain levels of commitment — confers particularly healthy rewards to seniors.

The results of two studies released earlier this month focus specifically on improvements in stress levels and cognitive functioning among older volunteers. Led by Sae Hwang Han, PhD, an assistant professor of human development and family sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, both research projects describe the physiological and psychological mechanisms by which helping others contributes to the health of the helper.

In the first study, focusing on the effects volunteering has on chronic stress and the systemic inflammation that triggers it, Han and his team analyzed data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to track helping habits and levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an inflammatory marker, among thousands of older volunteers over the course of several years. They found that seniors’ charitable services “buffered the adverse relationship between chronic stress and inflammation at higher CRP levels.”

Writing in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, Han explains how volunteering and other prosocial behaviors activate a network of neurobiological systems, including the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, the sympathetic nervous system, and the immune system, to boost the health of the helper. The study’s findings, he notes, have “important implications for individuals at greater risk of inflammation-related health issues.”

That neurobiological network also plays a role in the relationship between volunteering — in moderation — and cognitive function. In a subsequent study, published in Social Science & Medicine, Han and his team mined HRS data again to determine whether formal and informal acts of helping may delay the development of dementia. What they found offers some valuable nuance to prospective older volunteers, whether their work is part of a formal association or simply a matter of helping a friend or family member.

“Results indicated that transitioning into volunteering and informal helping were both associated with a higher level of cognitive function and a slower cognitive decline, and [they] highlighted how sustained engagement in helping can yield cumulative cognitive benefits that progressively become greater over time,” Han explains.

But the nature of the transition and the amount of time an older volunteer commits can both affect cognitive function, he adds. Abrupt life transitions of any sort in later life have been shown to be detrimental to well-being; diving too suddenly into a formal volunteering role or an ongoing informal one can be similarly damaging. And the time spent in helper mode can also skew the rewards: The benefits tend to increase with the amount of time spent volunteering over the course of a week, but they may begin to dissipate after about four hours.

“Everyday acts of support — whether organized or personal — can have lasting cognitive impact,” Han concludes. “What stood out to me was that the cognitive benefits of helping others weren’t just short-term boosts but cumulative over time with sustained engagement, and these benefits were evident for both formal volunteering and informal helping. And in addition to that, moderate engagement of just two to four hours [per week] was consistently linked to robust benefits.”

I’m not sure that my monthly excursions with Leo — even when combined with the intermittent rescue missions — amount to enough consistent helpfulness to sustain what remains of my modest brainpower or to cool my aging body’s inflammatory impulses. There is, however, that weekly visit from our 8-year-old grandson, which I’d like to think offers a helpful respite to his busy parents.

Trouble is, Han and his colleagues may be right about moderating the duration of your volunteering. After trying to keep up with The Little Guy for five-and-a-half hours every Sunday, I often notice that my helpfulness doesn’t seem to be offering me much help at all.