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