Good Health Through Social Connection

We have either forgotten or are not aware that our social connections are just as important to our health as any other common risk factor such as lack of exercising, obesity, smoking, etc.  People are naturally social beings.  Over the years, researchers and Scientists have verified and stressed the importance of having positive relationships in our lives. Our relationships with each other greatly contribute to our overall mental and physical health.

One of the keys to making and maintaining connections with others is the ability to develop and foster relationships. This ability is known as interpersonal skills. Like any kind of skill, interpersonal skills can be learned. That’s the good news! The bad news is that this is a skill set that is often taken for granted. It is true that some people are more natural in socializing with others in any kind of setting. These are people who tend to have lots of friends because people want to be around them. But for many of us, this seemingly easy and natural ability does not come quite so easily. You are not alone, and many people struggle to meet others or to deepen their connections with friends or even partners.  In today’s society, we are seeing a large increase of depression, anxiety, anger, mood disorders, etc.  If we are able to re-educate the public on how to work with their interpersonal skills and with ones self-awareness our society will improve greatly without the help of unnecessary drugs.  Often drugs are just one example for a quick fix and these are symptoms as its only masking the issue but not targeting the root solution.  A person with social skills will begin to understand they can open themselves up with others and they are not alone.  The support of friends, family, co-workers is beneficial to our health because it establishes a supporting environment for everyone.  That environment fosters a social support that helps an individual since they can rely on the others for help.

The Health Benefits of Good Friends

One such study, reported in the journal Cancer, followed 61 women with advanced ovarian cancer. Those with ample social support had much lower levels of a protein linked to more aggressive types of cancer. Lower levels of the protein, known as interleukin 6, or IL-6, also boosted the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Women with weak social support had levels of IL-6 that were 70% higher in general, and two-and-a-half times higher in the area around the tumor.

In 1989, David Spiegel, MD, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, published a landmark paper in Lancet. It showed that women with breast cancer who participated in a support group lived twice as long as those who didn’t. They also had much less pain. Sheldon Cohen, PhD, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, has shown that strong social support helps people cope with stress.  “Friends help you face adverse events,” Cohen tells WebMD. “They provide material aid, emotional support, and information that helps you deal with the stressors. There may be broader effects as well. Friends encourage you to take better care of yourself. And people with wider social networks are higher in self-esteem, and they feel they have more control over their lives.”

Other studies have shown that people with fewer friends tend to die sooner after having a heart attack than people with a strong social network. Having lots of friends may even reduce your chances of catching a cold. That’s true even though you’re probably exposed to more viruses if you spend a lot of time with others.  “People with social support have fewer cardiovascular problems and immune problems, and lower levels of cortisol — a stress hormone,” says Tasha R. Howe, PhD, associate professor of psychology at Humboldt State University. “Why? The evolutionary argument maintains that humans are social animals, and we have evolved to be in groups. We have always needed others for our survival. It’s in our genes. Therefore, people with social connections feel more relaxed and at peace, which is related to better health.”

Friends Can Be Stressful

Friends can be a source of stress, though. In fact, friends can cause more stress than others precisely because we care so much about them.

Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, has found that dealing with people who arouse conflicted feelings in us can raise blood pressure more than dealing with people we don’t like. “My colleagues and I were interested in relationships that contain a mix of positivity and negativity,” she says. “For example, you might love your mother very much, but still find her overbearing or critical at times.”

By attaching people to portable blood pressure monitors, Holt-Lunstad and her colleagues found that blood pressure was highest when people were interacting with someone they felt ambivalent about.  What she found really surprising was that these interactions caused higher blood pressure than those with people the research subjects felt completely negative about. “We suspect that people we feel positive toward can hurt us that much more when they make a snide comment or don’t come through for us because they are important to us. Friends may help us cope with stress, but they also may create stress.”

Now, at the same time friends may help us cope with stress, but they also may create stress.  Are we better off without them? Hardly. “One thing research shows is that as one’s social network gets smaller, one’s risk for mortality increases,” Holt-Lunstad says. “And it’s a strong correlation — almost as strong as the correlation between smoking and mortality.”

When a person is able to work with their personal differences with someone else they are also building their interpersonal skills.  An individual begins to learn and understand more about themselves and others.  In a supportive and healthy environment this is a good thing since everyone involved understands that a mutual solution is achieved when everyone involved is working together.  A sense of fulfillment is established by everyone resulting in confidence and happiness.

The Impact of Loneliness

What about loners? Are they at greater risk of dying because they prefer to be alone?  Only if they feel lonely. One study found that drug use among young people was higher among those who said they were lonely. Older lonely people tended to have higher blood pressure and poorer sleep quality. They also were more tense and anxious.

Another study found that college freshmen who had small social networks and claimed to be lonely had weaker immune responses to flu vaccinations. They also had higher levels of stress hormones in their blood.

Unfortunately, Americans have fewer friends than they used to, according to a recent study, “Social Isolation in America,” published in the American Sociological Review. The authors found that from 1985 to 2004, the number of Americans who feel they have someone with whom they can discuss important matters dropped by nearly one-third. The number of people who said they had no one they could discuss such matters with tripled to nearly 25%. The authors suspect that long work hours and the popularity of the Internet may contribute to the decline in close relationships.

The study also found that the percentage of people who talk about important matters only to family members increased from 57% to 80%. Those who depend solely on their spouse for these talks increased from 5% to 9%.

In one study (Cohen, Doyle, Skoner, Rabin, & Gwaltney, 1997) the number and diversity of social relationships was found to be important to one’s susceptibility to cold and flu. Of 276 participants in the study, those who had three or fewer types of relationships (i.e., spouse, parents in-law, children, other close family members, close neighbors, friends, workmates, schoolmates, fellow volunteers, religious and non-religious group affiliations) were 4x more likely to catch a cold than were persons with six or more relationships! They tested this by injecting all participants with rhinoviruses that cause cold and flu symptoms.

There are also many studies that show that social isolation (i.e., not having social relationships) is a significant health risk factor. In fact, the negative health risks of social isolation is comparable to the health risks of smoking, having high blood pressure, being obese, or not getting enough physical activity. (To read more about the studies that looked at the impact of social isolation on health see Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, and Glaser, 2002; Bowling & Grundy, 1998).

Better Health and Longevity Through Connection

There are numerous studies that our connection with other people are associated with better health and longevity.  Researchers from Brigham Young University reviewed 148 studies that tracked the social habits of more than 300,000 people. They found that people who have strong ties to family, friends or co-workers have a 50 percent lower risk of dying over a given period than those with fewer social connections, according to the Journal Plos Medicine.

The researchers concluded that people with weak social ties to the community or few friends is just as harmful to health as being an alcoholic or smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes a day. Weak social ties are more harmful than not exercising and twice as risky as being obese, the researchers found.

Notably, the strongest effect was shown when studies used complex measures of social integration, focusing on a person’s family ties, friendships and work connections. In those studies, the survival rates for people with strong relationships were twice that of those with weaker ties. Single measures, like whether a person was married or living alone, weren’t good predictors of health. For instance, people who lived with others had just a 19 percent survival benefit compared with those who lived alone.

It is truly in our nature to be connected with one another.  Not only does our social connections help our health but by building that supportive community across the globe it can also help resolve all the current issues in our society today.  Its all about our connections with each other and learning how to build those bridges between us.  Now, it all begins with you so lets build that healthy connection together!

Sources and References:

Bowling, A. & Grundy, E. (1999). The association between social networks and mortality in later life. Reviews in Clinical Gerontology, 8, 353 – 361.

Cohen, S., Doyle, W. J., Skoner, D. P., Rabin, B. S., & Gwaltney, J. M. (1997). Social ties and susceptibility to the common cold. Journal of the American Medical Association, 25, 1940 – 1944.

Keyes, C. L. M. & Waterman, M. B. (2003). Dimensions of well-being and mental health in adulthood. In Bornstein, M. H., Keyes, C. L. M., and Moore, K. A., Well-being: Positive development across the life course. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., McGuire, L., Robles, T. F., and Glaser, R. (2002). Emotions, morbidity, and mortality: New perspectives from psychoneuroimmunology. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 83 – 107.

Ryff, C. D. & Keyes, C.L.M. (1995). The structure of psychological well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 719 – 727.

Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (2002). Interpersonal skills. In Knapp, M. L. & Daly, J. A. (2002), Handbook of interpersonal communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage publications.