Why Love Heals: How Friendships Keep You Healthy

[Guest guest]

Why Love Heals: How Friendships Keep You Healthy

By Crowley and Henry S. Lodge, MD

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Getting Connected

There is an actual, physical chunk of brain that runs your emotions

called the limbic brain. You can trace its development back a

hundred million years. You can see it on an MRI. Every second you

spend with other people, your limbic brain is tuning in to them,

being changed by their moods, and changing theirs in turn. It's a

constant, life-affirming limbic dance.

Experimental psychologists have known for decades that we share

moods. If you don't believe me, just think of the people who make

you feel better simply by walking into a room. These sorts of

interactions feel so good (directly and unconsciously) that we would

wither away without them. This is why you should never underrate the

emotional side of your life.

Women are better than men at keeping the limbic dance going by

working to ensure that families stay connected as the years go by

and by building lasting friendships and deep connections from the

many different aspects of their lives. High school and college

friends, friends from work, friends from raising children together,

from neighborhood committees, from shared vacations -- sure, some of

these bonds and friendships fall away as part of the natural cycle

of growing and changing, but most women find new friendships to

replace them. Women who don't find close friendships, who have

trouble keeping up connections, need to make an effort to change

those patterns.

Hundreds of research studies confirm that isolation hurts us and

connection heals us through the same physical mechanisms as exercise

and healthy diet. Blood vessels are measurably more elastic, the

heart's ability to respond to extraordinary demands is higher,

cardiac inflammatory protein levels are lower, and blood pressure

response to exercise is better in more connected people. Their

stress-hormone blood profiles are also measurably healthier than

those of isolated people.

Building a Community

Sadly, I see people in my medical practice who give up on

connection, who stop living years before they die. These are women

and men who feel so overwhelmed by the prospect of getting out and

building new connections that they stop trying. Our society -- with

its emphasis on the traditional family structure and the workplace

as centers of social togetherness -- doesn't help matters. People

who lack either of those have to work doubly hard. But the

consequences of not making connections are so devastating that you

cannot allow yourself to retreat into isolation. The stakes are too

high. A study of more than 4,000 women and men in Alameda County,

California, showed a direct link between the size of one's social

circle and survival, with larger circles bringing ever-greater

longevity. Women with fewer than six regular contacts outside the

house had significantly higher rates of blocked coronary arteries,

were more likely to be obese and have diabetes, high blood pressure,

and depression, and were two and a half times more likely to die

over the course of the study than those with an extensive social

network.

Having either a good marriage or just one close friend cuts the risk

of mortality by a third, and the benefit increases the more your

circle broadens. It's reassuring to note that both quality and

quantity count. Some people have a few close friends or family

members, while others have a broad network of involvement with their

community. Either works well, though it's best to have both.

Talk to any nurse about how much it matters for patients to have

visitors in the hospital -- about the difference in outcome for

those people who have a steady stream of visitors, a wall covered

with get-well cards, flowers obscuring the monitors and tubing. But

the thing is, you can't wait until trouble strikes to build your

community. You have to work at it day after day, make the calls,

make the effort, be the hospital visitor years before you need one

yourself.

I'm lucky that no one in my own family has ever shied away from

making these kinds of efforts. I couldn't imagine any other way

until I became a doctor and saw the isolation in so many people's

lives, particularly as they age. My mother and father each care

deeply about building their passions and connections. They work hard

at staying in touch with friends, and they're critically important

people in their children's and grandchildren's lives. They have made

living, caring, and connecting their jobs.

Optimism is an extraordinary limbic resource and is available to

everyone because it's a learned skill. You can decide to be

optimistic with remarkable success. Not Pollyanna optimistic, but

glass-half-full optimistic, and it's worth the effort. Women who are

optimistic about motherhood before pregnancy have a much lower risk

of postpartum depression. Optimistic women have lower mortality

rates from cancer and heart disease. It seems to help to approach

illness with a positive, optimistic attitude, which may lower blood

pressure and improve immune function. You recover from bypass

surgery faster and better, you get out of bed sooner after back

surgery, and you go back to work and regular exercise sooner. Anger

doubles your risk of heart disease. But perceiving your work as

satisfying cuts your risk of heart disease in half.

Finding Satisfaction in Life

Generations ago, extended families provided rich, lifelong limbic

safety nets and connections to the group. In the days before TV,

telephones, electric lights, and convenience stores, this wasn't a

choice. There was nothing to do but be within a group. The great

gift of traditional societies was that you were a necessary part of

the community your whole life. Okinawans, a group of people living

on an island off the coast of Japan, have the greatest documented

longevity of any population on earth, and in their culture older

people are integral parts of the community until they draw their

last breath. At 90, or 100, they are respected for their life

experience and are relevant to the group.

It seems as if that model is vanishing from the planet. But our

society still has all those limbic connections -- you just have to

find them and put them together for yourself. For those who are

frantically busy with work, the office can be an important source of

connection and gratification, which helps to explain why increasing

numbers of Americans of both sexes are choosing to work past

retirement. Sometimes this is for financial reasons, of course, but

sometimes it's due to the increasing recognition that work has a

value beyond the paycheck. Part of the value is simply in the

structure -- in having a reason to get out of the house in the

morning. Part of the value is in the social interactions that come

automatically with most jobs. And part of it is the importance of

still having a role in the tribe: a defined niche in the great

social order.

There are other pathways to connectedness, too, such as

spirituality. A search for meaning is too profound and personal for

facile advice giving, but we do know that for limbic reasons alone

you should be on the journey. The growing number of reasonably well-

done studies on spirituality point to its importance in our lives

for both mental and physical health. Many people who search for

meaning in their lives and their experience via religion or

spirituality survive loss, cancer, and heart disease better and have

healthier immune chemistry and lower risks of stroke and Alzheimer's

disease than those who do not.

People who report that faith is an important part of their lives

have higher levels of life satisfaction and emotional well-being.

You can decide for yourself how much of the positive effect stems

from the increased social connections offered by organized religion

and how much is from something ineffable, but the simple message is

that it is important to look for the meaning in your life's

experience.

Every single human being on the planet craves limbic connections. We

just need to head out the door to build them. The tide of social

atrophy -- of limbic decay -- is not that strong. It's just

remorselessly steady. The ultimate message is swim against the tide,

every day. If you work at it steadily, it is almost impossible to

fail.