Nurture your relationships – an Enlightened Resolution for Valentine’s Day

We believe there are effective ways of making supportive, reasonable, and sustainable new year’s resolutions that energize rather than add to your stress. Two good ones are:

Another important principle of enlightened resolutions that I briefly mentioned in my last email is supporting what biology requires, giving ourselves things that were present in the natural environment where and when we evolved.

It turns out that many of the so-called “diseases of civilization,” like cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, digestive disorders, etc., seem to be associated with lifestyle choices that are not in accord with our evolutionary biological requirements.

A fascinating study about type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance was recently published. Diabetes is considered to be one of the “diseases of civilization,” caused by things like poor diet, lack of exercise, etc. That is why this study is so interesting.

It’s title begins: “How Sweet Is Your Love?” It’s about marital status and blood sugar, and concludes: “it seems that marital relationships, regardless of the quality of the relationship, are associated with lower HbA1c values for male and female adults aged over 50 years.” That is, it’s not about love, not about the quality of the marriage, not about, as they say, “spousal support and spousal strain.” Just being in relationship is enough to improve the parameters of your physical health.

If we look at our evolutionary history, we can infer that marriage probably came late onto the human scene. We evolved to live in packs, groups, and tribes before we created nuclear families. Many studies argue that developing the ability of relating socially is a key quality that early humans needed to further evolve. So our need to be in relationship probably precedes and is more fundamental than the institution of marriage. Successfully interacting with others is the key.

While there are many studies that document the health benefits of marriage, there are also many that delineate the health risks of social isolation, and the benefits of social interaction. I believe that the same diabetes study could have been done comparing people who have diverse social relationships versus those who live in virtual solitude.

A recent New York Times article talked about the mental health benefits of minor social interaction, like talking to the produce guy at Sprouts. This is the type of thing that was diminished by the prevalence of online shopping and got even more diminished during the pandemic. A Psychological Science study concluded that “individuals with higher well-being tend to spend less time alone and more time interacting with others.” The study stated that the more involved the interaction, the better. Psychology Today reported that having limited face-to-face social contact nearly doubles someone’s risk of having depression. A 1988 Science paper reported that “social relationships, or the relative lack thereof, rival cigarette smoking and obesity in their association with illness and death.”

Psychologist Susan Pinker states that direct person-to-person contact triggers parts of our nervous system that release a “cocktail” of neurotransmitters tasked with regulating our response to stress and anxiety. Studies have shown that social interaction can improve the health of cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, relieve physical pain, improve memory, protect brains from cognitive decline and neurodegenerative disease, and promote higher late-life satisfaction. That’s a lot!

Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the world’s longest running study on happiness, has stated that improving the quantity and quality of our relationships can make it less likely that we will develop illnesses like coronary artery disease or arthritis, that our relationships affect our physiology. He describes the “loneliness epidemic,” and that “people who are lonely and socially isolated stay in a kind of chronic fight-or-flight mode where, at a low level, they have higher levels of circulating stress hormones like cortisol, higher levels of inflammation, and that those things gradually wear away different body systems.”

He also agrees that increased health and happiness can come from “casual connections [and that] a smile or a short conversation with the cashier in the supermarket or the bus driver can also bring benefits. Ultimately, it comes down to connection and belonging.”

The study’s bottom line is “Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period.”

Arthur Brooks, who teaches classes on happiness at Harvard and writes a column on happiness for the Atlantic Monthly magazine, has stated that eye contact with another person can help you release the hormone oxytocin, which promote happiness.

In the first email of this series, I told you about an orca trainer, who said that the only way to train an orca (or another person) (or yourself) is to reward the behavior you’d like to see more of, and ignore the rest. What you acknowledge and reward will expand.