3 Benefits of Immersing Yourself in Beauty. Blog #12

A few years ago while painting a particular piece I noticed that I felt better the longer I

worked on it. I believe I discovered the impact viewing fine art can make on my mental and physical health and now we have proof. Did you know art is scientifically proven to improve your mental health and well being in multiple ways? Art has an incredible ability to broaden empathy and improve critical thinking skills. A massive study — called the HUNT Study — of over 50,000 Norwegians above the age of 13 found that there was a correlation between art activities, life satisfaction and mental health. Researchers found that art activities, including trips to the art museum and galleries, were also tied to better health outcomes, along with lower rates of depression and anxiety. Researchers found that the benefits became dramatic the more art events people attended. And the data keeps coming.

An Italian study of 1,500 people found that attending arts and culture events was the second best predictor of life satisfaction. So if art imparts greater mental health and overall well being, how does it do this? Increased dopamine and reduced cortisol. Semir Zeki studies neurasthenics — a discipline looking at the brain science behind perceptions of art. Zeki published a breakthrough paper in 2011 describing a place in the brain that registers beauty in art and releases dopamine, a motivating chemical that is connected to the good feelings created by love, chocolate, and even cocaine. The University College London professor continues to chase down exactly how the brain reacts to art, but his work makes it clear that the brain finds profound reward when viewing beautiful works of art. Dopamine is a chemical that helps us form memory, feel energy, focus on tasks, and coordinate our movement. When you have an increase, you experience improved mood, giddiness, and social openness. By increasing dopamine, art that we find beautiful creates a reward that improves our mental well being. While this should come as no surprise to art lovers, it reminds us that having great art around us is a scientifically proven way to increase feelings of happiness and improve our mental health. From the ongoing pandemic, news updates, work emails, not to mention the 101 things you still have to do today — we face a lot of stress. Over time, stress has major negative health effects. That means we need to pursue things that keep our stress levels down. And art, it turns out, is great at combating stress. Cortisol is a steroid hormone that the body produces. The body releases it to wake us up in the morning and keep us alert, but you can get too much of a good thing. When we experience stress, our body ups the cortisol — creating the long term negative effects including depression and aging. A 2006 study brought London city workers into an art museum for a brief, 35 minute tour. After a little more than half an hour, participants had marked decreases in cortisol. This and other studies like it remind us of the soothing feeling we get while viewing art, flipping through an art book at home, or looking at the painting in our living room. And that soothing feeling has serious health benefits. Health practices and in particular dental, offices are often seen and portrayed as a cold and sterile place. Arts create a safer, more supportive and relaxed ambiance to practices that can affect the general setting for patients and staff, the same. More and more health professionals are making art a serious part of patient care. This may be because art has demonstrated positive effects, not only on patient well-being, but also on health outcome such as pain tolerance. In fact, the direct connection between art and healthcare has long been established and explored through studies and actual implementation of its findings. The primary beneficiaries of art in the practice are the patients themselves. Art benefits them by aiding in their physical, mental, and emotional recovery, as well as decreasing their perception of pain while positively impacting medication outcomes, treatment compliance and quality of life. Art’s ability to increase pleasure and decrease stress combine to make a powerful boost to your sense of well being. And that increased mental health and well being goes on to have a profound positive impact in the rest of our lives. While we all suspected it, science has given us ways to measure and think about this effect. A life lived with art is happier and healthier. ThomasCKeller.com