This groundbreaking and life-changing work based on the latest research effectively demonstrates “the profound impact that love, connection, and kindness have on our health” (Mark Williamson, PhD, director of Action for Happiness).

When Columbia University doctor Kelli Harding began her clinical practice, she never intended to explore the invisible factors behind our health. But then there were the rabbits. In 1978, a seemingly straightforward experiment designed to establish the relationship between high blood cholesterol and heart health in rabbits discovered that kindness—in the form of a particularly nurturing post-doc who pet and spoke to the lab rabbits as she fed them—made the difference between a heart attack and a healthy heart.

As Dr. Kelli Harding reveals in this eye-opening book, the rabbits were just the beginning of a much larger story. Groundbreaking new research shows that love, friendship, community, and our environment can have a greater impact on our health than anything that happens in the doctor’s office. For instance, chronic loneliness can be as unhealthy as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day; napping regularly can decrease one’s risk of heart disease; and people with purpose are less likely to get sick.

At once paradigm-shifting and empowering, The Rabbit Effect illuminates vital public health research showing kindness in our day-to-day lives can make the “world a healthier, happier place. I recommend this book highly for anyone who wants to live more healthfully” (Christy Turlington Burns, and CEO of Every Mother Counts).

Dr. Kelli Harding is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center. She is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, as well as boarded in the specialty of psychosomatic (mind-body) medicine. Kelli works in the emergency room at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, NPR, The New York Times, Medscape, WFUV’s Cityscape, and US News & World Report.