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Creativity Improves Your Health

Creativity helps us create works of beauty, solve problems, and refresh our bodies and our minds. It's fun. When you are having fun, you are positively impacting your health. Studies show that engaging in creative behaviors improves brain function, mental health and physical health.

You've probably heard of flow - it's the state you get in when you're completely absorbed in something. Have you ever been working on a project and completely lost all sense of self and time? That's flow. It reduces anxiety, boosts your mood, and even slows your heart rate.

It's not just being in flow that makes you happy. Repetitive creative motions like knitting, drawing, or writing help activate flow, and are all tasks that create a result. When you succeed in creating a result, your brain is flooded with dopamine, a natural anti-depressant that actually helps motivate you, whether or not you're aware of your increased happiness.

Creativity is also an effective treatment for patients with dementia - a serious illness of the mind. Studies show that creative engagement not only reduces depression and isolation, but can also help people with dementia by sharpening their senses.

The average person has about 60,000 thoughts in a day. A creative act such as crafting can help focus the mind, and has even been compared to meditation due to its calming effects on the brain and body. Even just gardening or sewing releases dopamine.

Creativity reduces anxiety, depression and stress. Studies have found that writing helps people manage their negative emotions in a productive way, and painting or drawing helps people express their mental injury or hurtful experiences that they find too difficult to put into words.

Studies show people who write about their experiences daily actually have stronger immune system function. Writing, a creative work, increases your CD4+ lymphocyte count, the key to your immune system.

Playing music can also function well in your immune system. Studies show that our left brain is responsible for the motor functions, while our right brain focuses on melody. When the two parts work together, our cognitive function improves.

It's pretty amazing that doing the activities is good for us. Get a pen and start writing or coloring. Get your hands dirty with pottery or gardening or pick up an instrument. Whatever you decide to do, it's time to start getting creative!