How Good Relationships Can Boost Our Health
Mar 29, 2018
Dr Howick
Mar 29, 2018
- were married
- had a parent with whom they had contact
- had a family member with whom they had contact
- had a neighbour with whom they had contact
- had a friend with whom they had contact
- had a workmate with whom they had contact
- had a schoolmate with whom they had contact
- volunteered
- were part of a wider group with or without religious affiliation
Although living alone can offer conveniences . . . physical health is not among them - Julianne Holt-Lundstad
North Dakota residents Clifford and Eva Vevea were happily married for sixty-five years, and in 2013 they died within a few hours of each other. That same year Illinois residents Robert and Nora Viands who had been married for seventy-one years died on the same day. A year earlier in the United Kingdom, Marcus Ringrose died twenty-four hours after his wife's funeral. Stories like this are reported in newspapers with sensational headlines like, 'You Really Can Die of a Broken Heart.' This is an exaggeration, because broken hearts rarely actually kill us. Yet research is beginning to prove there is some truth beneath the overblown headlines. Of course, poets have known for millennia that bad relationships are bad for our health. Shakespeare's Lady Montague dies of a broken heart after her son is banished in Romeo and Juliet; Psalm 69 states that broken hearts can make people weak; and the great Persian poet Rudaki put it most romantically:
Look at the cloud, how it cries like a grieving man
Thunder moans like a lover with a broken heart.
Social relationships and health
Recent scientific research is revealing that having good relationships with family, friends, and social groups is good for our health. Sheldon Cohen, of the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is one of the world's leading researchers of the relationship between social support and health. In one of his most interesting studies, he gave a group of people a virus that causes the common cold. He also asked them whether they:
Participants who ticked at least six of the roles listed above basically, the people who had good social networks , were only half as likely to develop a cold in the days after being exposed to the cold virus, compared with those who were less socially integrated.
Cohen's study has been generalised in a mega-review of over 300,000 people, which showed that good social relationships can make use live 5 years longer. Five years is a long time. It is as good as smoking is bad. Smoking reduces your life span by an average of five years.
Why are social networks good for health?
Good social networks can improve our health in three main ways. First, friends can offer direct help. You might take a disabled friend for a walk, lend an ear to someone who is feeling sad, or inform a relative with an illness about a new treatment of which they have not heard. Researchers call this the main effects hypothesis.
Second, helpful friends and family can make you feel protected and less anxious, thus reducing the harmful effects of stress. This is called the stress buffering hypothesis. This was shown in a fascinating study of over 700 Swedish men. Researchers assessed the men's health and also handed the men questionnaires about:
- Whether they were experiencing stressful events in their lives, such as financial trouble, divorce, problems with the health of a family member
- Whether their social networks were providing emotional support
Dr Howick
