We talk about food all the time.
Movement. Sleep. Stress. Strength.
All important.
But there’s another part of health I think we sometimes treat like a nice little bonus.
Other people.
Turns out, they may be considerably more important than that.
Research has repeatedly found that loneliness and social isolation are associated with worse health and a greater risk of dying earlier. Heart disease and stroke show up in the research too.
The exact percentages vary depending on what researchers measure and how they measure it.
I don’t think the percentage is the interesting part.
The interesting part is this:
Humans apparently aren’t designed to do life alone.
That shouldn’t be particularly surprising.
For most of human history, being part of a group wasn’t an optional social activity you squeezed in after work. We depended on one another.
Now you can go through an entire day barely interacting with another human being.
Order groceries online.
Work from home.
Watch television.
Scroll through hundreds of people on your phone without actually talking to one of them.
We may be more connected technologically and less connected personally.
I’ve thought about this a lot because of RiversZen.
People originally come through our doors because something hurts.
A hip.
A shoulder.
A back.
They want to stretch. Get stronger. Improve their balance. Feel better.
But something else happens.
They learn names.
They talk before class.
Somebody notices when they haven’t been there.
We laugh.
We hear about grandchildren and vacations and surgeries and dogs and whatever else is happening that week.
That’s not something we designed as part of a health program.
It just happened because people kept showing up together.
And I’ve come to believe it’s every bit as much a part of what we do as the movement.
Peggy experienced the other side of that during cancer treatment.
When things got difficult, she had people.
Family. Friends. Students. Nurses who became part of her world for a while.
She has talked about how important that support was.
You can’t measure that with a blood test.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.
And loneliness isn’t necessarily the same as being alone.
Some people love solitude.
You can live by yourself and have wonderful relationships.
You can also sit in a house full of people and feel terribly lonely.
I think the better question is:
Do you have people who know you?
People you’d call.
People who would notice if you disappeared for a while.
People you laugh with.
People you can tell when things aren’t going particularly well.
If the answer is yes, appreciate the hell out of them.
If the answer is no, maybe that’s something worth working on just as deliberately as walking or eating better.
Call somebody.
Take a class.
Volunteer.
Join something.
Talk to the neighbor you’ve been waving at for six years.
You don’t need twenty new friends.
Maybe you just need one more real conversation.
We spend an awful lot of time trying to figure out how to live longer.
It might be worth making sure we have somebody to live it with.
What an eye opening post. Covid brought isolation to all of us. For some it is much more difficult to reconnect. Maybe your circle got smaller because some of them died or moved away or made connections closer to home. There can be a myriad of reasons. Whatever the reason. Call someone today. Go for a walk. Dave suggested a number of great activities. Simple baby steps. Feel the difference it can make. Let us know what works for you.