Being grateful seems to have a lot of positive effects on our lives. In fact, grateful people may have better sleep, healthier hearts, and fewer aches and pains. But what is going on in our bodies when we’re grateful that might help us be healthier? A couple of recent studies aimed to find out. In the first study, 61 healthy women between the ages of 35 and 50 were randomly assigned to either a six-week online gratitude activity or a writing activity (as a comparison). Once a week, the gratitude group were given a writing prompt that asked them to write about someone they were grateful for (for example, “Think of someone in your life who you feel like you have never fully or properly thanked for something meaningful or important that they did for you”). The control group wrote about neutral topics (“Think about the longest distance that you …