Medical science has proved that “Only the Lonely” is a more accurate selection than “Only the Good Die Young” if we’re trying to pick the true hits on the Grim Reaper’s jukebox.
The lonely, the disenfranchised, the disconnected, those who feel their lives have no purpose-studies show that these are the folks at greatest risk for coming down with a bad case of premature death or life-threatening disease, says Dean Ornish, M.D., president and director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute in Sausalito, California, and author of Dr. Dean Ornish ‘s Program for Reversing Heart Disease.
Amazingly, in a study directed by psychologist Sheldon Cohen, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, people with the most diverse types of social contacts and networks were the least likely to be susceptible to a cold virus intentionally squirted up their noses.
Why does social interaction seem to have a life-lengthening and health-promoting effect?
“Bottom line: Nobody knows,” Dr. Ornish says. What is known, he says, is that “it is the quality, not the quantity of relationships” that matters.
So no one knows for sure why mingling and sharing thoughts and feelings with others is healing. Theories abound. Dr. Cohen and his research cohorts at Carnegie Mellon believe that having a wide range of social environments is distracting-and that’s good. “For example,” Dr. Cohen says, “someone whose only social role is worker will find problems at work more distressing than someone who works, has a family, and belongs to social groups.”
Whether we call it distress or just stress, it truly is a killer, Dr. Ornish says. Much of his program for heart attack patients is devoted to helping them learn to reduce stressful responses. “We know that when people are under stress, their immune systems are impaired and their cardiovascular system is more prone to heart attacks or sudden cardiac death,” he says.
In Dr. Cohen’s study that we mentioned earlier, participants’ blood levels of norepinephrine and epinephrine were measured regularly. These two hormones are released when we are under acute stress. Dr. Cohen’s researchers squirted the common cold virus up the nostrils of all the test participants. Those who became infected were those who had the highest levels of the stress-indicating hormones and were those with the fewest types of social contact. At this point in medical research, however, it is too early to say that we gain the health effects of positive interaction with others because our brains instruct our glands to exude some protective chemicals-or our brains emit specific electrical impulses-that strengthen our immune systems, Dr. Ornish says.
Dr. Ornish and colleagues have implemented and studied the effects of programs “that increase the sense of connection and community, and we have found that the patients initially think that this is the part of the program that will be least helpful. And yet when they have gone through the program, they find that it is the most powerful and meaningful part.” That’s because the peer interaction encourages people to stick with positive helpful behaviors, such as healthy diets, ceasing smoking, and other goals the programs set forth for the patients, Dr. Ornish says.
“People who feel lonely and isolated are more likely to smoke, abuse other drugs or alcohol, eat too much, work too hard, or watch too much television as ways of numbing, distracting, or killing the emotional pain that they feel. I think the real epidemic in our society is this emotional or psychological or spiritual heart disease-this sense of loneliness, isolation, and alienation that’s so common when people feel that sense of disconnection,” says Dr. Ornish. People in the throes of that epidemic are more likely to engage in behaviors that increase their risk of premature death or disease, he says.
So how does one get connected? First, says Dr. Ornish, realize that there is a difference between being alone and being lonely.
“It’s not how many people you call every week or how many people live in your household,” says Dr. Ornish. “It’s not so much the number of social contacts you have but the perception of whether you feel loved and cared for and nurtured by them. Someone could be alone by choice-in a monastery, for example-and they can also feel that sense of interconnection with something spiritual.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be another person,” adds Dr. Ornish. “Some studies show that even having a plant to take care of, or a pet, prolongs life. Anything that takes us outside of the belief that we are separate and only separate, I think, is healing. The word healing even comes from the root ‘to make whole.’”
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