I have a good friend, a dear, dear friend, really, who I’ll call “K.” “K” suffers from an autoimmune disease. In the past five years she’s gone from daily injections of a multiple sclerosis drug that packs difficult side effects to taking no meds at all. She carries the most grateful, compassionate outlook of anyone I know.  I’ve watched her devote herself over the years to exercising more, getting a three-wheeled bike when she realized a two-seater wouldn’t work and toodlling around her neighborhood, building a strong social community, and training herself to think, as she puts in, “on the better side.”

I heard an interview on NPR today with an American vet from the Iraq war who just this week had two new arms transplanted onto his torso at Johns Hopkins — in a first of its kind surgery — to replace the two he lost in Iraq several years ago. He’d also lost a leg. He was amazing. The interviewer asked, “How do you feel?” He said, “I was pretty happy before the surgery, my life was pretty good, but yes, this definitely just makes me even happier.”

Think about that. “I was pretty happy before.” Despite losing three limbs in the war. I suspect his transplant surgery has a good chance of succeeding. Gratitude is not only good for our relationships, it also helps with healing. Studies show it helps us to better deal with pain, suffering, illness, grief and loss. Patients who keep a positive mindset prior to even a relatively simpler surgery, such as total knee replacement surgery, and who “recognize within themselves the ability to ensure that things will be okay,” say researchers, consistently report less pain and disability after surgery and recover faster.[i]  Older people who have a positive take on life are less likely to fall – suggesting that the risk of falling among the elderly is tied to one’s view of the world.[ii]

There are dozens of studies like this. We know it’s true. So why is it so incredibly hard to live, as my friend “K” would say, “on the better side?” I write about that too, in The Last Best Cure. What’s getting in our way. And really, how to get out of our own way.

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[i] Public release date: 17-Feb-2011.  Healthy lifestyle, positive attitude can help improve patient outcomes.  American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. [ii] BMJ 2010; 341:c4165 doi: 10.1136/bmj.c4165 (Published 20 August 2010) Determinants of disparities between perceived and physiological risk of falling among elderly people: cohort study, Stephen R Lord, professor et al.