Is Social Disconnection Comparable to Smoking

over the course of my career i’ve

studied factors associated with health

and longevity

we all seem to be obsessed with finding

the secret to longer life

and according to this 104 year old it’s

diet coke

in reality deep down we know that there

is

no life hack health takes a lot of work

in fact it’s so hard we have billion

dollar industries aimed at diets and

countless gadgets to motivate us to

exercise

of course we know it isn’t just one

thing

but i do believe that there is one that

is underappreciated

so what is the biggest determinant of

health

many of us assume it’s genetics we

either won the genetic lottery and we’ll

live to 100 or we’re doomed

but genetics accounts for only about

five percent

of health how about those health

behaviors that we work so hard at

they account for roughly 20 percent

what about medicine all the developments

in health care

surgical procedures medications

they account for roughly twenty percent

of health outcomes

combined these account for less than

fifty percent of population health

so what is the rest the rest is what has

been labeled

social determinants of health this

encompasses a variety of factors

but our social relationships are a key

component

now i realize this might be surprising

of course our relationships can bring us

joy

make our lives more meaningful and

fulfilling but our health

and how long we live perhaps you may

have heard the statistic

that lacking social connections carries

a risk

similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes

per day

this has been quoted in the media other

ted talks and

even by the u.s surgeon general but

what exactly does it mean and where did

it come from

well i can explain because that

statistic comes from my

research so let me first give you a

little bit of background

for the past two decades my research has

focused on how our relationships

influences our physical health i

first began by focusing on stress and

its influence on

biomarkers of health i would bring

people into a lab

hook them up to monitors and then stress

them out

not surprisingly their heart rate and

blood pressure and other physiological

signals would spike as a result of these

stressful situations

now ironically a common stressor task is

public speaking

if only i were wearing a monitor right

now i could demonstrate what a powerful

effect this has on both stress and

physiology

however in my my studies i would find

the typical spikes in blood pressure

would be blunted among those who had

large supportive

networks or brought in a supportive

friend but it would be exaggerated among

those who had few supportive

relationships or

brought in a friend that they had mixed

feelings towards

these studies give us a snapshot of

what’s going on in our bodies

which if experienced on a daily basis

puts us

at greater risk for heart disease and in

fact there

were large-scale epidemiological studies

that

document these long-term health effects

yet outside of a small group of

academics

no one else seemed to recognize that our

relationships influence our health

beyond our psychological well-being

so were these studies a fluke or

such a minor influence that they weren’t

noteworthy

had i somehow fallen into the trap of

thinking my research was far more

important than it really was

or was this truly something that was

important that everyone else seemed to

be missing

this led me and my colleagues to take on

the enormous task of

analyzing worldwide data

this included every study that had

measured

some aspect of participants social

relationships

it included the size of their social

network social participation perceptions

of support

relationship satisfaction etc and then

followed them over years

often decades to see whether this

predicted who was still alive and who

was dead

so what did we find those who are more

socially connected were 50 percent

more likely to be alive at the follow-up

in other words

having more and better relationships

predicted living longer

what about lacking relationships does

that put us at risk

when we followed this up this time we

had data from over

3.4 million participants worldwide

being isolated lonely or living alone

each significantly predicted increased

risk for earlier death

but what do these percentages mean lots

of things have been shown

to either help or hurt our health so

just how seriously should we take this

so i wanted to compare these findings to

the evidence on

other factors known to influence

mortality risk

including air pollution obesity

excessive alcohol consumption and

smoking

each of these affect mortality to

varying degrees

when we averaged across the way we

connect socially the white bars

the effect is comparable and in many

cases exceeds that of other factors

my research suggests that one of the

single best things that you can do for

your health

is to nurture your relationships now i

was once asked

does this mean i can still smoke as long

as i have friends

no let’s be very clear i’m not claiming

that if you have close intimate

relationships with

friends and family that you can still

smoke

quit exercising or forgo life-saving

treatments or that we should stop caring

about any of these things

each of these will also significantly

increase your risk of dying

rather what i am arguing is that we need

to take our social relationships

just as seriously for our health as we

do these other things

in fact the extent to which we are

socially connected

also significantly influences risk of

heart attack

stroke type 2 diabetes dementia

and alzheimer’s disease it even

influences our rate of cellular aging

wound healing

and susceptibility to viruses

this isn’t just an interesting

correlation between our social

relationships and health

we have growing evidence of what’s in

that black box

that explains how it is that our

relationships

get under our skin to influence health

outcomes

whether it is helping us cope with

stress encouraging healthy behaviors or

discouraging

risky behaviors or providing a sense of

meaning and purpose in our lives each of

these

have been directly linked to biological

mechanisms that account for these health

outcomes

hundreds of studies have now replicated

these findings

we can now say quite confidently that

there is scientific

evidence that having more and better

relationships

significantly predicts living longer

while having fewer and poorer quality

relationships

predicts earlier death from all causes

this is true regardless of gender age or

geography

on average people who are more socially

connected live longer

yet global trends suggest a significant

portion of the population

is isolated lonely or both

in recent years the u.s surgeon general

has described this

as a loneliness epidemic the uk and

japan have appointed a minister for

loneliness

and the national academy of sciences

issued a consensus report that describes

this as a

major public health concern and then

in 2020 brought on what some describe as

a

double pandemic trillions of tax dollars

have been spent

on economic stimulus and bailouts but

how much will a social recession cost

the government

if we don’t prioritize human connection

but what can be done about it we can’t

put good relationships in the drinking

water

and there’s currently no pill for this

so you may be thinking

the government and the health care

system can’t and perhaps

shouldn’t do anything about this this is

a personal issue

when we think of what we need to

prioritize when it comes to our personal

health

we typically think of diet exercise

sleep maintaining a healthy weight and

smoking we need to add

social relationships to that list but

how do we do that

we take these things seriously because

we have national guidelines that provide

recommendations for what we should be

striving for

these guidelines are what are taught to

us in health education

what our doctors ask us about during

routine visits

and it’s what’s emphasized on

public-facing health resources

like this one we need similar strategies

in order to add social connections to

this list

we as individuals also need to make

social connection

a personal priority so let’s take a

moment

and take stock of our own social

connection

how many friends do you have

how frequently do you interact socially

with others

do your family and friends care about

you do they understand the way you feel

can you rely on them can you open up to

them

do your friends and family make too many

demands did they criticize you

did they let you down do they get on

your nerves

well a variety of measurement tools have

been used in research

answers to these very same questions

were shown to predict biomarkers of

health

including blood pressure body mass index

and inflammation in a

dose response manner meaning that for

every increase in social connection

there was a decrease in risk

and this was true across ages from

adolescence to older age

this suggests that this applies to us

all

and we are all somewhere on this

continuum of risk

whether you’re a government policy maker

a business owner

an educator a parent a social media

influencer or a member of your

neighborhood

it applies to us all and my research

indicates you might just save someone’s

life

the last few summers i’ve taken students

to hot spots of longevity where

people live longer than anywhere else in

the world

early in the trip one of my students

asked why would anyone want to live to

100 that sounds

miserable she like many of us equates

growing old with a series of health

problems and poor quality of life

yet being more socially connected has

been associated with lower depression

slower age-related cognitive decline

greater happiness

and greater satisfaction with life

in other words nurturing social

relationships

has the potential to not only increase

our length of life

but the quality of that life

later in that trip we met su giulio who

is 105 at the time

he wrote his bike daily wrote poetry and

starred in the local theater productions

he had a larger than life personality

and he knew

everyone and everything that went on in

that village

he made quite an impression on me and my

students

because he had both a long life and a

very

full life i often joke i want to be like

him when i grow up

but i had the profound realization

in order for that to happen i can’t wait

till i’m older to figure this out

i need to nurture my relationships with

my family now so that they’ll actually

want to live near me when i’m older

i need to be a friend in order to have

friends

i need to put myself out there to show

up

to be part of a community we can’t wait

the time is now it’s time to prioritize

our relationships like our life depends

on it

because it does thank you