Death is inevitable, but that hasn’t stopped health researchers from looking for ways to put it off as long as possible. Their newest candidate is painless, free, doesn’t taste bad and won’t force you to break a sweat: Gratitude. A new study of almost 50,000 older women found that the stronger their feelings of gratitude, the lower their chances of dying over the next three years. The results are sure to be appreciated by those who are naturally inclined toward giving thanks. Those who aren’t may be grateful to learn that with practice, they may be able to enhance their feelings of gratitude and reap the longevity benefits as well.

Joel Wong, a professor of counseling psychology at the University of of Indiana who researches gratitude interventions and practices and wasn’t involved in the new work, said, “It’s an exciting study.” Mounting evidence has linked gratitude with a host of benefits for physical and mental health. People who score higher on measures of gratitude have been found to have been biomarkers for cardiovascular function, immune system inflammation, and cholesterol. They’re more likely to take their medications, get regular exercise, have healthy sleep habits, and follow a balanced diet. Gratitude is also associated with a lower risk of depression, better social support, and a greater purpose in life, all of which are linked with longevity.

However, this is the first time researchers have directly linked gratitude to a lower risk of earlier death, Wong and others said. “It’s not surprising, but it’s always good to see empirical research supporting the idea that gratitude is not only good for your mental health but also for living a longer life,” Wong said. Study leader Ying Chen, an empirical research scientist with the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, said she was amazed by the absence of studies on gratitude and mortality. So she and her colleagues turned to data from the Nurses Health Study, which has been tracking the health and habits of thousands of American women since 1976.

In 2016, those efforts included a test to measure the nurses’ feelings of gratitude. The women were asked to use a seven-point scale to indicate the degree to which they agreed or disagreed with six statements, including “I have so much in life to be thankful for” and “If I had to list everything I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list.” A total of 49,275 women responded, and the researchers divided them into three roughly equal groups based on their gratitude scores. Compared with the women with the lowest scores, those with the highest scores tended to be younger, more likely to have a spouse or partner, more involved in social and religious groups, and generally better health, among other differences.

The average age of nurses who answered the gratitude questions was 79, and by the end of 2019, 4,068 of them had died. After accounting for a variety of factors, such as the median household income in their census tract, their retirement status, and their involvement in a religious community, Chen and her colleagues found that the nurses with the most gratitude were 29 percent less likely to have died than the nurses with the least gratitude.