Q: Is it true that having good relationships increases your chance of living longer?
A: Since the late 1980s, studies have suggested that this is true. People who enjoy close relationships with family and friends are more likely to live longer than people who are isolated and lonely.
A few years ago, researchers at Brigham Young University looked at this phenomenon closely. They collected almost 150 studies involving more than 300,000 people. Average age of participants was 64 when they entered the various studies. And data was collected for an average of more than 7 years.
The review focused on how often people made contact with others. It also assessed the types of relationships people had.
The authors of the analysis then looked at health outcomes. They also calculated the effect of relationships on survival.
The conclusion? Older people with adequate social relationships had about a 50 percent greater likelihood of survival than people who were isolated.
This statistic is easy to misunderstand. It doesn't mean that socially connected people live to 90, while isolated people die at 60. But it's a powerful statistic nonetheless. The survival advantage is equal to quitting smoking. It's twice as large as the longevity benefit that comes from regular exercise, or maintaining a normal weight.
How does this work? One idea is that people with close relationships experience less stress. Another is that family and friends may encourage you to make healthy choices. Or they may encourage, remind, or help you to get medical care when illness strikes.
Of course, it may be that the link works in the reverse direction. That is, healthy people may be more likely to be social than folks who are less healthy.
Still, it's probably true that, for most people, enjoying the company of family and friends does enhance the quality of life. As a bonus, you may get more time to enjoy.
(Michael Craig Miller, M.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an associate physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Mass. He is a Senior Medical Editor at Harvard Health Publications.)
(For additional consumer health information, please visit http://www.health.harvard.edu.)