The Rabbit Effect: Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness

Discover an eye-opening and provocative new way to look at our health and what makes us human based on the latest, groundbreaking discoveries in the science of compassion, kindness, and human connection. When Columbia University doctor Dr. Kelli Harding entered medical school and began her clinical practice, she never intended to explore the invisible factors behind our health--but then there were the rabbits. In 1978 Dr. Robert Nerem conducted a study to establish the relationship between high blood cholesterol and heart health. He fed a group of rabbits a high-fat diet. Predictably, they gained weight and their cholesterol values spiked dangerously high but when he looked at their arteries under the microscope, only 40 perfect of the rabbits showed visible heart disease. The other 60 percent weren't at risk for heart attack or stroke. Baffled, he repeated the study with a new group of rabbits; the results were identical. The hidden factor wasn't their diet or their genetics: it was their post-doc. The healthy rabbits were being cared for by a post-doctoral student who would pet, cuddle, and talk to the rabbits while she fed them. That kindness was the difference between a heart attack and a healthy heart. As Dr. Harding explores in this fascinating book, the rabbits were just the beginning of a much larger story. The truth is that the vast majority of our health--up to 90 percent of it--depends on social and environmental factors. In other words, the amount of love you have in your life, kindness you encounter and spread, and support you have from your community has a larger impact on your health than what you eat and how you work out. In The Health Paradox, Dr. Harding tells extraordinary stories from her clinical practice, as she explores just how profoundly love affects our health. With clear and accessible writing, she advocates for a new kind of health care, one based on the science of compassion, kindness, and human connection. A provocative and empowering meditation on what it means to be human, this compelling work will forever change the way we think about health, wellness, and how to live.…