Healthy Aging: Why Relationships Matter
Investing in meaningful relationships is not only a nice touch, but it could save your life, according to new research. In a new study published in General PsychiatryResearchers found that satisfying relationships with friends, family, and work colleagues are associated with a lower risk of developing multiple chronic diseases in old age — at least in women.
But the less satisfying the relationships were, the higher the risk of developing long-term illnesses, according to the study. Influencing factors such as income, education and health behavior only partially explained the results.
As part of the study, researchers analyzed nearly 14,000 participants in the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, an ongoing population-based study looking at factors associated with women’s health and well-being across multiple age groups.
The women in the current study were 45 to 50 years old in 1996, and their health and well-being were monitored through a questionnaire every three years until 2016. The final analysis included nearly 8,000 women, more than half of whom had long-term multiple-term conditions over the 20-year follow-up period.
Those who developed these conditions were likely to have had “lower educational attainment, find it difficult to support their income, are overweight/obese, physically inactive, smoke, and have had a surgically induced menopause,” according to the study. Women who reported lower satisfaction with their relationships “were more than twice as likely to accumulate multiple long-term illnesses after fully adjusting for potentially influential factors.”
Other studies have found that social attachment was identified as the strongest protective factor out of more than 100 factors in depression. Loneliness and social isolation among older adults have also been linked to heart disease and an increased risk of dementia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Our results have significant implications for the treatment and intervention of chronic diseases. First, at the individual level, these impacts may help advise women on the benefits of starting or maintaining quality and diverse social relationships in middle to early age,” researchers said in a press release about the study.
Additionally, the researchers recommended that at the community level, “interventions that focus on satisfaction or quality of social relationships may be particularly efficient in preventing the progression of chronic disease,” and finally at the national and global levels, “social connections (e.g., relationship satisfaction ) should be considered a public health priority in prevention and intervention for chronic diseases.”
Further research is needed to determine whether specific effects of relationships, such as intimacy, quantity, and emotional and practical support, determine the prevalence of multiple long-term disorders. It is also not known whether the results are applicable to men or other cultures.
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