Collage of ski fun

Social health studies make socializing a KEY health pillar!

Last Updated on January 27, 2016 by Patricia Carter

Summary:  Time to share social health studies!  Pleasurable, mind blowing, social connection is such a key part of the puzzle to long term health and wellness; do NOT overlook this social health pillar as it is the easiest to tweak, it’s benefits (decreased risk of cardiovascular, mammary tumor incidence and growth, high blood pressure, inflammation… — see the studies below) are cumulative, and implementing such is so incredibly mind blowing, joyful, and rewarding.  And, not to be missed… in case you aren’t reaping the physiological benefits of a happy marriage, while there are associations of greater incidence of cardiovascular disease in both men and women in unhappy marriages, the benefits of staying in an unhappy marriage go disproportionately to men, not women, who have further increased cardiovascular ramifications.

Relationships influence health three ways: behavioral, psychosocial, and physiological; this post focus is physiological only.

Studies find socializing isn’t just good for the soul, it’s critical for your health and wellness.  And it doesn’t need to be extreme activities. Last weekend, with a swipe of a “W’sup” text screen, a favorite couple downed a few extra drinks to delay their dinner among anxious dinners eyeing up their table to await our arrival an hour later.  The energy generated from that chance camaraderie…  all felt it well into the next day waking refreshed… two cross country skied, one ran 5 miles, and the last spun and weight lifted.

lightbulb2If you’re not upping  your energy quotients by this simple social equation, you’re missing out on a whole lot of energy and health bonus points that clean diet and low toxin nutrient dense food living alone won’t provide.

While the studies are detailed below, it’s important to lay ground work for some key findings.

This 2016 study, is the first study to definitely link social relationships with  “concrete measures of physical well-being such as abdominal obesity, inflammation, and high blood pressure, all of which can lead to long-term health problems, including heart disease, stroke and cancer. Researchers found that the actual size of a person’s social network, and  building broad social relationships and social skills for interacting with others, was as important as diet and exercise during adolescence and late adulthood.  Ranking relationship importance on par with diet and exercise means it is crazy important for our youth and aged! Makes me sincerely appreciate all those kido after school and weekend activities.

What about middle ages? Your social network size is not as important; the quality matters more. It’s what those connections provide in terms of social support or strain.  How much loyal support and solidarity a close friend provided during both good times and bad times was important in this life phase.

Upcoming studies: The microbiome and relationships!

For almost 60 years, the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), aka the “Happy Days Study,”  has closely followed the life course of roughly a third (N=10,317) of Wisconsin high school graduates from the class of 1957.  WLS is one of the most consistent, comprehensive and expansive studies of aging and health in America and has evolved to become one of the longest-running social science studies ever undertaken.  WLS provides valuable information about the group’s ongoing education, employment, health  medical and life histories including diseases, health-related behaviors, cognitive status, and psychological and physical well-being, family life, and aging status. The data can be mined by researchers and covers nearly every aspect of the participants’ lives from early life socioeconomic background, schooling, family and work to health, social participation, civic engagement, well-being, and cognition, and even includes detailed geographical data showing where subjects have lived over the course of their lives. This data is obtained from completion of highly detailed surveys (1957, 1964, 1975, 1993, 2004, and 2011).

Additionally, the WLS cohort contributes biological samples such as saliva, which can be genotyped.  And now, WLS is being expanded to cover the microbiome; the cohort is providing fecal samples to allow exploring associations to the microbiome since environment and social interaction are now known to play such a large role in the composition and changes to the microbiome.WLS Microbiome Samples are now Being Collected for this study, A POPULATION BASED STUDY OF THE GUT MICROBIOME: A Pilot Project with the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.”   

Check out the most recent May 2014 Wisconsin Longitudinal Study Participant Report, especially pages 28 and 29 which details “Difficulty performing five common daily activities” which included: dressing, walking across a room, bathing or showering, eating, or getting in or out of bed. Seems US is near the bottom on the list with over 16% having difficulty with one or more of these activities!?! Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, Greece, Sweden, Czechia, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, Spain, Hungary, Belgium and Israel all fare better. 

A practical example implementing positive tribe into your seasonal lovin lifetime activities amid media head bobbing: drop the buds

It’s WINTER in my part of this world and that means… SKI….  I’m going there, but wherever you are reading this post, substitute your season and the seasonal activity you’re lovin and move it tribal including your family and friends.

Listen up to the points of Pogge’s thoughts treading up Big Sky, Montana, 12 minute lift ride that guarantees nothing short of pure shenanigan filled twisting and turning adventure back to ground zero:

Skiing is at its core a social sport. A shared experience. Lift conversations and on-hill shenanigans are just part of it, along with après-ski revelry, blazing hearths in ski lodges, and spring tailgate parties… [Few enter the cave not smiling feeling that blanket rush of warmth melt the bite of cold.]  We’re a tight tribe, and for good reason. Skiing is a time- and resource-intensive sport. Most ski towns are small, personal, and filled with like-minded people who often choose to sacrifice stability, career, and even family in order to be a part of this self-sorting club.  And shared sacrifice [including near death experiences and views that leave us in awe and speechless] encourages close relationships. It’s kind of a foxhole effect.  -Tuned  Out? Or Tuned In?

It is impossible to not de-stress and smile recalling constant head counting being outnumbered by your kidos and friends, the oops into mogul turns, and sightings of tribe breakaways from lift vantage views. And the best, icy mustaches and frozen cheeks melt in warm embrace. What’s your season tribe lovin lifetime activity de-stress recollections?

Flash forward to today’s quads. What’s up with speaker helmet heads that bob with butts inches apart for 12  minute rides?

Thirty-two year old Pogge notes: “A recent study revealed that U.S. adults spend 11 hours a day using electronic media. And despite being a fully accredited outdoorsy guy, I still probably beat that average—though I’m not brave enough to keep score for 24 hours.”  I’m not bothering to look up that citation especially since I’m as guilty as he of the electronic overload, especially bringing to you microbiome science.

Times change but don’t waste certain times; use every opportunity to interact in purely positive ways —try not to choose being plugged in, tuned out, and isolated, on the mountain (or whatever turf finds your footprints at the moment).  Get it?

Three strangers—all seated within inches of me and one another—each listened to his own virtual concert, wrapped in an audio cocoon. None of us had spoken a word. We faced forward, isolated by goggles and helmets and digital silos… sailing through a deep-blue sky on a beautiful day at Big Sky, Mont., we sat silent, side by side, entirely alone. -Tuned  Out? Or Tuned In?

Now for some ‘social = good health‘ studies, focus physiological:

Study 1:  Social relationships and physiological determinants of longevity across the human life span, 2016
  • This University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study, found here, along with supporting information pdf here, is the first study to definitely link social relationships with  “concrete measures of physical well-being such as abdominal obesity, inflammation, and high blood pressure, all of which can lead to long-term health problems, including heart disease, stroke and cancerThe study provided new insights into the biological mechanisms that prolong life and showed how social relationships reduce health risk in each stage of life.” The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill NEWS article, Social networks as important as exercise and diet across the span of our lives, explains:

The study assessed:  both structural and functional dimensions of [three] social relationships (social integration, social support, and social strain).  Bio-markers of physical health that represent important biological pathways underlying stress response that strongly predict future disease and mortality were objectively measured:

C-reactive protein which is a measure of systemic inflammation, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, and body mass index.  Associations were made for life stages including adolescence and young, middle, and late adulthood, and such associations were compared across life stages.

The supporting information pdf here details the cohort and social relationship descriptives for the four studies used by UNC:

Social support

Family/friend

  • Do family/friends care about you?
  • Do they understand the way you feel?
  • Can you rely on them?
  • Can you open up to them?

Spouse support—How much:

  • Does your spouse care about you?
  • Does he/she understand the way you feel?
  • Can you rely on him/her?
  • Can you open up to him/her?
  • Does he/she appreciate you?
  • Can you be yourself around him/her?

Social strain

Family/friend support—How much:

  • Do family/friends make too many demands?
  • Do they criticize you?
  • Do they let you down?
  • Do they get on your nerves?

Spouse support—How much:

  • Does your spouse make too many demands?
  • Does he/she criticize you?
  • Does he/she let you down?
  • Does he/she get on your nerves?
  • Does he/she argue with you?
  • Does he/she make you feel tense?

 FINDINGS from Harris and the study:

  1. The actual size of a person’s social network was important during adolescence and late adulthood. “Based on these findings, it should be as important to encourage adolescents and young adults to build broad social relationships and social skills for interacting with others as it is to eat healthy and be physically active.”  
  2. In middle adulthood, it wasn’t the number of social connections that mattered, but what those connections provided in terms of social support or strain.  The size of your social network isn’t as important in middle adulthood, when the quality, not the quantity, of social relationships appears to matter more.   How much loyal support and solidarity a close friend provided during both good times and bad times was important in this life phase.
  3. During adolescence, social isolation increased the risk of inflammation by the same amount as physical inactivity while social integration protected against abdominal obesity.
  4. In old age, social isolation was actually more harmful to health than diabetes on developing and controlling hypertension.

CONCLUSIONS

  • “We studied the interplay between social relationships, behavioral factors and physiological dysregulation that, over time, lead to chronic diseases of aging — cancer being a prominent example,” Yang Claire Yang, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, CPC fellow and a member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. “Our analysis makes it clear that doctors, clinicians, and other health workers should redouble their efforts to help the public understand how important strong social bonds are throughout the course of all of our lives.”
  • “The relationship between health and the degree to which people are integrated in large social networks is strongest at the beginning and at the end of life, and not so important in middle adulthood, when the quality, not the quantity, of social relationships matters,” Harris said.”
Study 2: Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review, 2010
  • The lack of social connections increases the odds of death by at least 50%.   This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow-up period.
  • These findings indicate that the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption and exceed the influence of other risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.
Study 3: Social isolation and the inflammatory response: sex differences in the enduring effects of a prior stressor, 2006 — females are the stronger species, at least for rats!
  • Stress response in rats differed due to sex: For females, the long-term social stressor and brief physical stressor had opposite effects on immune functions and were “staggering stronger” compared to male rats.
  • Male rats showed slower healing response when injected with a foreign body compared to female rats when subjected to only a 2 to 3 week of isolation followed by the acute physical stress.
  • The study: 3 month (considered long term for a rat) socially isolated rats then experienced 30 minutes of acute physical stress.  Researchers evaluated impact on the inflammatory response: the body’s innate immune response to bacteria, viruses, and parasites.
  • This study sheds some light on why socially isolated men are more vulnerable to disease and death than isolated women. -Hermes, Eurekalert
Study 4 (mammary tumors):  Physical Health, social isolation dysregulates endocrine and behavioral stress while increasing malignant burden of spontaneous mammary tumors, 2009 and here for UChicago NEWS discussion.
  • This study suggests causal relationship between social interaction and disease (here, incidence of mammary tumors and growth rate). Rats living alone first had higher stress hormones and became more fearful and vigilant in young adulthood.  They then became more prone to malignancy in late-middle age — having 135% increase in number of tumors and over 8,000% increase in the tumor’s size.
  • In isolated rats, the stress hormone receptor entered the nucleus of mammary tumor cells which is where gene regulation occurs. This occurred less often in the cells of non-isolated rats.
  • Another related study can be found at: Mammary Cancer and Social Interactions: Identifying Multiple Environments That Regulate Gene Expression Throughout the Life Span, 2005.
Study 5 (marriages happy and unhappy):
  • Marriage is perhaps the most studied social tie. Recent work shows that marital history over the life course shapes a range of health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, chronic conditions, mobility limitations, self-rated health, and depressive symptoms (Hughes and Waite 2009; Zhang and Hayward 2006). Continuously married adults experience a lower risk of cardiovascular disease compared with those who have experienced a marital loss, in part due to the psychosocial supports conferred by marriage (Zhang and Hayward 2006). Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy
  • Harmful effects of unhappy marriagesDespite plummeting divorce rates, only 17% of marriages are happy ones. While there are associations of greater incidence of cardiovascular disease in both men and women in unhappy marriages, the benefits of staying in an unhappy marriage go disproportionately to men, not women, who have increased cardiovascular ramifications.  Today, 2/3 of marriages are intact; folks are staying in unhappy marriages and there is lots of stress. Individuals might think twice about toughing it out if they were fully aware of the consequences of living in stressful marriages—at least, for the female half of each couple.health effects of negative marriage quality increase steadily with age, indicating that cardiovascular damage from chronic martial stress may be cumulative. It may progress steadily as the unhappy marriage continues. For the (apparently) growing number of women who find themselves in stressful marriages, these findings have a profound implication: The sooner women leave stressful marriages, the less cumulative damage they will do to their bodies. (Single women, it turns out, do not suffer from being alone nearly as much as men.)  The Surprising Truth About Couples on the Edge 
  • Poor marriage quality is associated with compromised immune and endocrine function and depression (Kiecolt-Glaser and Newton 2001). Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy
  • The negative effect of marital strain on health becomes greater with advancing age (Umberson et al. 2006). Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy
Study 6, more from:  Social Relationships and Health: A Flashpoint for Health Policy

Great article summarizing social themes and physical health. Key research findings include:

  1. Social relationships have significant effects on health;
  2. Social relationships affect health through behavioral, psychosocial, and physiological pathways;
  3. Relationships have costs and benefits for health;
  4. Relationships shape health outcomes throughout the life course and have a cumulative impact on health over time; and
  5. The costs and benefits of social relationships are not distributed equally in the population.

Links to further studies provided in this article are:

  1. Low quantity or quality of social ties is associated with a host of conditions including development and progression of cardiovascular disease, recurrent myocardial infarction, atherosclerosis, autonomic dysregulation, high blood pressure, cancer and delayed cancer recovery, and slower wound healing (Ertel, Glymour, and Berkman 2009; Everson-Rose and Lewis 2005; Robles and Kiecolt-Glaser 2003; Uchino 2006).
  2. Poor quality and low quantity of social ties is also associated with inflammatory biomarkers and impaired immune function, factors associated with adverse health outcomes and mortality (KiecoltGlaser et al. 2002; Robles and Kiecolt-Glaser 2003).
  3. Supportive interactions with others benefit immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular functions and reduce allostatic load, which reflects wear and tear on the body due, in part, to chronically overworked physiological systems engaged in stress responses (McEwen 1998; Seeman et al. 2002; Uchino 2004).
  4. Social support in adulthood reduces physiological responses such as cardiovascular reactivity to both anticipated and existing stressors (Glynn, Christenfeld, and Gerin 1999).
  5. Berkman and Syme (1979) showed that the risk of death among men and women with the fewest social ties was more than twice as high as the risk for adults with the most social ties. Moreover, this finding held even when socioeconomic status, health behaviors, and other variables that might influence mortality, were taken into account.
  6. Social ties also reduce mortality risk among adults with documented medical conditions. Brummett and colleagues (2001) found that among adults with coronary artery disease, the socially isolated had a risk of subsequent cardiac death 2.4 times greater than their more socially connected peers.
Additional info: Live Your Life Well page (Mental Health America) more social relationships = good physical health.
In Conclusion…  Stay immune strong:  Be a good friend and party on with your family and close friendships… often.  And… mitigate the physical damage occurring in the unhappy marriage if you find yourself in that spectrum.

Best in health through awareness,

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One thought on “Social health studies make socializing a KEY health pillar!”

  1. Dr. Mimi Guarneri: Eight Steps to a Healthy Heart, http://www.mimiguarnerimd.com/EightStepsHealthyHeart.php discusses the bad relationship heart disease link:

    5. Say Goodbye to Stressful Connections
    In a 2007 study of more than 9,000 men and women, researchers at University College London determined that people in troubled relationships had a higher risk of heart problems. Such bad vibes can lead to chronic stress, elevating hormones that can cause aging, arrhythmia, diabetes, and high cholesterol, explains Mimi Guarneri, M.D., cardiologist and medical director of the Scripps Center for Integrative Medicine in La Jolla, California. The study authors cite other potential factors: Negative relationships may also stir up anger, which can influence heart disease through cumulative “wear and tear” on the immune and nervous systems.

    For help coping with difficult folks you can’t cut off, Horwitz recommends working on how you respond to tense interactions. Use a breathing exercise, for example, to help stop stress before it hits the boiling point.

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