Today's topic: Pillar number six - The Importance of Social Relationships
Social relationships add meaning and joy to our lives. They also influence how long we are likely to live and how active and functional our later years will be
After reviewing key studies, I will explore how we can assess our social relationships and ultimately improve them
Scientific studies that support the relationship between social relationships and longevity
First Study: Impact of spousal loss on mortality-studies have shown that when one spouse dies, the likelihood of death in the other spouse doubles during the next week, month, and year.
Second Study: Harvard Study of Adult Development showed that the presence of social relationship in your 50s was the strongest predictor of living long and well. More impactful that blood pressure, exercise, or cholesterol control
Third Study: Meta-analysis summary of multiple studies showing the strong relationship between social connections and survival rate
Fourth Study: The risk of mortality in people with heart disease was greatest in individuals lacking significant social relationships
Fifth Study: although not specifically about relationship, this study showed the importance of mental health (depression) and the risk of experiencing a cardiac event
Assessing your own social relationships:
A self-assessment or social relationship audit can be found in this important article
Seven important aspects of social connections:
Safety/Security
Learning/Growth
Emotional closeness
Affirmation
Romantic intimacy
Assistance in need
Fun/Relaxation
These seven aspects of social relationships need not be met by a single individual. Having a network of people in your world can help you to have each of the needed support elements.
Personal Reflections:
Importance of immediate family and broader relationships for happiness and health
Strategy for maintaining connections even as one ages and loses close friends or relatives
Motivation to evaluate and strengthen social networks for well-being
Upcoming Topics:
Future topics to explore after the six pillars
Possibilities like nutritional supplements, caffeine, alcohol, sun protection, navigating healthcare, and finding the right doctor
Today's topic: Pillar number six - The Importance of Social Relationships
Social relationships add meaning and joy to our lives. They also influence how long we are likely to live and how active and functional our later years will be
After reviewing key studies, I will explore how we can assess our social relationships and ultimately improve them
Scientific studies that support the relationship between social relationships and longevity
First Study: Impact of spousal loss on mortality-studies have shown that when one spouse dies, the likelihood of death in the other spouse doubles during the next week, month, and year.
Second Study: Harvard Study of Adult Development showed that the presence of social relationship in your 50s was the strongest predictor of living long and well. More impactful that blood pressure, exercise, or cholesterol control
Third Study: Meta-analysis summary of multiple studies showing the strong relationship between social connections and survival rate
Fourth Study: The risk of mortality in people with heart disease was greatest in individuals lacking significant social relationships
Fifth Study: although not specifically about relationship, this study showed the importance of mental health (depression) and the risk of experiencing a cardiac event
Assessing your own social relationships:
A self-assessment or social relationship audit can be found in this important article
Seven important aspects of social connections:
Safety/Security
Learning/Growth
Emotional closeness
Affirmation
Romantic intimacy
Assistance in need
Fun/Relaxation
These seven aspects of social relationships need not be met by a single individual. Having a network of people in your world can help you to have each of the needed support elements.
Personal Reflections:
Importance of immediate family and broader relationships for happiness and health
Strategy for maintaining connections even as one ages and loses close friends or relatives
Motivation to evaluate and strengthen social networks for well-being
Upcoming Topics:
Future topics to explore after the six pillars
Possibilities like nutritional supplements, caffeine, alcohol, sun protection, navigating healthcare, and finding the right doctor
Speaker 1:
Hi, I'm Dr Bobby Du Bois, and welcome to Live Long and Well, a podcast where we will talk about what you can do to live as long as possible and with as much energy and vigor that you wish. Together, we will explore what practical and evidence-supported steps you can take. Come join me on this very important journey and I hope that you feel empowered along the way. I'm a physician, ironman, triathlete and have published several hundred scientific studies. I'm honored to be your guide. Published several hundred scientific studies. I'm honored to be your guide. Welcome everyone.
Speaker 1:
Today we're going to explore pillar number six, which is the importance of social relationships in our lives. Now, not only are relationships a meaningful, important, gratifying part of our life, but the strength of those relationships affects how long we're likely to live and how functional those years will be. And, as always, I will share with you the scientific studies that support my views, and I'll have links in the show notes to those studies if you wish to take a closer look at them. As a reminder, the other five pillars that we've talked about are exercise, sleep, nutrition, mind-body harmony and exposure to heat and cold. If you missed my discussion of any of these pillars, feel free to listen to prior episodes. Well, the take-home messages for today are first, social relationships are strongly associated with living longer. Second, relationships are associated with reduced risk of heart disease. And third, you can take a relationship self-assessment to see where you are and how you might improve them. My hope for today is that it will motivate you to think a bit about your social network and how you might improve it if you so wish. Now I know that I've learned a lot from the evidence over the past few years, and it has influenced how I live my life, and I'll share a bit more about that later in the episode.
Speaker 1:
Well, today I'd like to walk through three studies that help me to feel convinced that relationships are a critical part of living long and well. Well, the first study is something you might have heard about maybe not the study itself, but the concept and I think it sets the stage very well for our discussion. This was a study that followed 95,000 people who had become widowed and then followed them for several years to see what happened to them after one of the spouses died. What they found is, soon after one spouse died, so too did the other one. Death within a week, death within the first month, death within the first six months was doubled. So when one spouse dies, there's a greater likelihood of death in the other. Now, what are the causes of that? Well, you could say it's not the relationship itself, it's common lifestyle and risk. So if one of the spouses smokes, maybe the other one did as well, but I believe that the underlying cause is really more about the loss itself and the grief associated with that. Now we don't know the exact relationship for why the studies showed this, but it begins to develop the theme that relationships are not only an important part of enjoyment, but they can affect how long we live and as soon we will talk about how well you can live.
Speaker 1:
The next study which has received a fair bit of press and discussion is a study that is called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. Now, this is a 75-year study, and it began with a group of Harvard men At the time Harvard didn't take women, so it was men and then they compared them to men that lived in Boston, those that weren't going to college back in the 1930s and 40s and were of lesser economic means, and they followed these people decade after decade to try to understand various aspects of development Now pertinent to what we're talking about today. The researchers were interested in what might predict who lives a long life, and a very functional one. So they looked at folks who were in their 50s and examined a whole host of factors to ask the question well, what are the characteristics of the men in their 50s who lived into their 70s and beyond and were quite functional as they got older? The strongest predictor, the number one predictor of who's going to live long and live well, was satisfaction with social relationships, and satisfying social relationships also predicted less cognitive decline, general happiness and reduction in pain.
Speaker 1:
What might have been the cause of this? Well, having good social relationships in this study meant having someone in your life who you can count on in times of need. So, as an example, who might you call in the middle of the night if you were sick or scared? And did you have someone in your life where that was the case? Now, those type of experiences are very stressful when you might be ill and you need some help, or there's a problem in your life and you want to share it with somebody. If you are alone in that experience, that increases stress, and if you're able to share those feelings with someone else, that can reduce the stress and that may have been the source of the results that we saw.
Speaker 1:
Well, the third study, which is actually a study of studies or a meta-analysis of a whole long series of publications, and they looked at about 300,000 people and they looked at them over the course of over seven years and what they found is people who had adequate social relationships had a 50% greater likelihood of survival compared to those who did not. Now, this relationship was just as strong as the risk factor of smoking. So we think of smoking, we think of being overweight, we think of high blood pressure as being major risk factors for survival and especially due to cardiovascular disease, but having adequate social relationships was just as strong and just as impactful as smoking. Well, the fourth study, or series of studies once again a combination of studies, looked at people with heart disease who were unmarried or had no significant person to confide in had a threefold increase in mortality in the subsequent five years. So, again, a relationship between whether you have a good social network and, if you had heart disease, whether you were likely to die from it. Whether you were likely to die from it.
Speaker 1:
Now, the final study isn't directly about relationships, but I think it supports the view, at least for me, that our emotions affect how long we may live, and what this study looked at was people who had depression compared to those who didn't, and once again, they found that emotions in this case depression was associated with a far higher likelihood of having a cardiac event compared to those who were not depressed. What I hope I've done now is to build a case that social relationships matter to our health, so they're not just nice to have in our lives, but they're fundamental to our health as well. Now, sadly, the data show that about a third of adults in the United States feel lonely, and about one in four adults above the age of 65 are socially isolated, and so these would be people who absolutely would be at risk for the things that we've just talked about. Well, in this next part of our dialogue, let's explore what can we do about this? How can we, in essence, take stock of our social relationships? So one of the major investigators in that harvest study I talked about, robert Waldinger. He headed up the study for a significant period of time, and he's written a book recently, along with the other studies we've talked about, is a self-assessment or, in essence, an audit of social relationships, and what is very important to understand is that a productive social connection is more complicated than just having someone to talk to.
Speaker 1:
In fact, there's really seven different aspects of social connection, all of which are important. The first is that point of safety or security Do you have somebody you can call in the middle of the night if you need help? That's one type of a social connection that's important. A second is whether you have someone in your life that you can learn with or learn from and grow with, so somebody who might encourage you to try new things or to take chances or to pursue life's goals. A third is do you have somebody that is emotionally close to you, that you feel you can confide in, who knows pretty much everything about you, and, again, the type of person you could call if you had a need. The fourth is is somebody in your life who kind of affirms who you are as a person and has perhaps shared experiences In my case, I have three brothers and sisters and they are people who have been with me for many, many decades and provide that for me.
Speaker 1:
Of course, romantic intimacy is another part of having successful relationships and somebody who can help you. Do you need help understanding how to fix something. My Wi-Fi is not working, my computer is not working, I'm trying to plant a tree and it's not working out very well. Somebody you can turn to. And then, final aspect, is fun and relaxation Somebody you can just go out and have a good time with.
Speaker 1:
One of the points to realize is that all seven of these aspects of a social relationship don't have to come from one person. You know, I am blessed to be married to Gail for over 40 years and she provides obviously many of the elements I've just talked about. But I also realized that you need other people in your life to perhaps have fun in different ways or to learn different things than you might from your spouse. And what is very interesting about this audit is you can basically ask do you have someone in your life that can help you with these types of seven areas? And if it's not from one person, maybe you have another person who you have fun with, somebody else you have romantic intimacy and another person emphasizes sort of learning and growth for you. So having all of these met would be wonderful and will help you in so many ways, but again, it can be happening from multiple people in your lives.
Speaker 1:
So where do I net out on all of the studies and all of the points I've raised? Well, I've been convinced that the evidence is pretty darn strong that social relationships affect how long I might live and how well I might function as the years go on. As I said, I'm blessed to have been married for quite a long time. I have two daughters, both of whom are married, and have a grandson, and I realized that immediate family is crucial to my happiness and my health. But I also realized that I needed a broader set of important relationships, and over the last number of years I've actively worked to build more connections with new people in my life, to add to kind of the aspects of closeness. That's very important.
Speaker 1:
Now, as I get older, I realize that people will die in my life, so I might have a very, very close friend who might get ill and die, and as we age, our social circle is apt to get smaller and smaller, and so one of the lessons I've learned for myself and I'll put this out here for you is that as you get older, perhaps have people in your life that are younger, perhaps a decade younger, perhaps two decades younger. So as you age and you may lose some of your friends or relatives, you will have another group of folks who are likely to outlive you and continue to be in your life for a very long time. So I've started to do that, and it's something that I think you might want to think about as well. Well, where do you go from here? Where do we all go from here? Well, I'm hoping that our discussion today has motivated you to think about your social network. Perhaps you're motivated to take the self-assessment, and I'll have a link to an article that you can read which will allow you to do that.
Speaker 1:
Well, coming to the end of this episode, we have now completed the six pillars, and, of course, we will return to them in the future episodes as new studies come out and to reinforce some of the points that I've raised. But now, after we have this baseline of six pillars, we can explore some new topics, and I think they're fun topics. Things like should we take nutritional supplements? Most Americans do, and what's the evidence that they might help us, and I look forward to talking about that and sharing what I've learned from looking at that data. Another topic we'll explore is is our morning coffee a good idea or a bad one? Now, what's the evidence about caffeine and coffee more generally? What about drinking alcohol? What do we know In essence? What's the good, the bad and the ugly on this topic? And that's something I want to explore together. Well, summer is rapidly coming. I live in Texas and it's pretty much already arrived. What do we know about sun protection, and does it reduce the risk of skin cancer and aging of our skin, and how convincing is the evidence in that regard? Another topic is how do I better navigate the healthcare system if I get ill, and how might I find a good doctor for me if I feel like I don't have one right now? Well, we are coming to a close.
Speaker 1:
I welcome all feedback from you Good feedback, not so good feedback. Welcome all feedback from you Good feedback, not so good feedback. Whatever it is that you think you can share. This is a very new podcast and I would gain greatly from your input. Feel free to connect with me through my website, drbobbilivelongandwellcom, or on Instagram, drbobbilivelongandwell. I hope that you will continue with me on our journey and I am honored to travel with you. Thanks so much for listening to Live Long and Well with Dr Bobby, if you want to continue this journey or want to receive my newsletter on practical and scientific ways to improve your health and longevity, please visit me at drbobbilivelongandwellcom. That's drbobbilivelongandwellcom.