This is dedicated to all human survival modes. Robust health is essential if we want to meet our goals in this life. It is never too late to be wise. It is never too early to revise.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
The secret to living longer may be your social life :FACE TO FACE CONTACT CAN MAKE US HEALTHIER, HAPPIER AND SMARTIER
by Susan Pinker at recorded April TED2017
(trascript time) 00:12 Here's an intriguing fact. In the developed world, everywhere, women live an average of six to eight years longer than men do. Six to eight years longer. That's, like, a huge gap. In 2015, the "Lancet" published an article showing that men in rich countries are twice as likely to die as women are at any age. 00:39 But there is one place in the world where men live as long as women. It's a remote, mountainous zone, a blue zone, where super longevity is common to both sexes. This is the blue zone in Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean, between Corsica and Tunisia, where there are six times as many centenarians as on the Italian mainland, less than 200 miles away. There are 10 times as many centenarians as there are in North America. It's the only place where men live as long as women. 01:13 But why? My curiosity was piqued. I decided to research the science and the habits of the place, and I started with the genetic profile. I discovered soon enough that genes account for just 25 percent of their longevity. The other 75 percent is lifestyle. 01:32 So what does it take to live to 100 or beyond? What are they doing right? What you're looking at is an aerial view of Villagrande. It's a village at the epicenter of the blue zone where I went to investigate this, and as you can see, architectural beauty is not its main virtue, density is: tightly spaced houses, interwoven alleys and streets. It means that the villagers' lives constantly intersect. And as I walked through the village, I could feel hundreds of pairs of eyes watching me from behind doorways and curtains, from behind shutters. Because like all ancient villages, Villagrande couldn't have survived without this structure, without its walls, without its cathedral, without its village square, because defense and social cohesion defined its design. 02:25 Urban priorities changed as we moved towards the industrial revolution because infectious disease became the risk of the day. But what about now? Now, social isolation is the public health risk of our time. Now, a third of the population says they have two or fewer people to lean on. 02:45 But let's go to Villagrande now as a contrast to meet some centenarians. 02:50 Meet Giuseppe Murinu. He's 102, a supercentenarian and a lifelong resident of the village of Villagrande. He was a gregarious man. He loved to recount stories such as how he lived like a bird from what he could find on the forest floor during not one but two world wars, how he and his wife, who also lived past 100, raised six children in a small, homey kitchen where I interviewed him. Here he is with his sons Angelo and Domenico, both in their 70s and looking after their father, and who were quite frankly very suspicious of me and my daughter who came along with me on this research trip, because the flip side of social cohesion is a wariness of strangers and outsiders. But Giuseppe, he wasn't suspicious at all. He was a happy-go-lucky guy, very outgoing with a positive outlook. And I wondered: so is that what it takes to live to be 100 or beyond, thinking positively? Actually, no. 03:55 (Laughter) 04:00 Meet Giovanni Corrias. He's 101, the grumpiest person I have ever met. 04:06 (Laughter) 04:08 And he put a lie to the notion that you have to be positive to live a long life. And there is evidence for this. When I asked him why he lived so long, he kind of looked at me under hooded eyelids and he growled, "Nobody has to know my secrets." 04:23 (Laughter) 04:25 But despite being a sourpuss, the niece who lived with him and looked after him called him "Il Tesoro," "my treasure." And she respected him and loved him, and she told me, when I questioned this obvious loss of her freedom, "You just don't understand, do you? Looking after this man is a pleasure. It's a huge privilege for me. This is my heritage." And indeed, wherever I went to interview these centenarians, I found a kitchen party. Here's Giovanni with his two nieces, Maria above him and beside him his great-niece Sara, who came when I was there to bring fresh fruits and vegetables. And I quickly discovered by being there that in the blue zone, as people age, and indeed across their lifespans, they're always surrounded by extended family, by friends, by neighbors, the priest, the barkeeper, the grocer. People are always there or dropping by. They are never left to live solitary lives. This is unlike the rest of the developed world, where as George Burns quipped, "Happiness is having a large, loving, caring family in another city." 05:34 (Laughter) 05:36 Now, so far we've only met men, long-living men, but I met women too, and here you see Zia Teresa. She, at over 100, taught me how to make the local specialty, which is called culurgiones, which are these large pasta pockets like ravioli about this size, this size, and they're filled with high-fat ricotta and mint and drenched in tomato sauce. And she showed me how to make just the right crimp so they wouldn't open, and she makes them with her daughters every Sunday and distributes them by the dozens to neighbors and friends. And that's when I discovered a low-fat, gluten- free diet is not what it takes to live to 100 in the blue zone. 06:19 (Applause) 06:22 Now, these centenarians' stories along with the science that underpins them prompted me to ask myself some questions too, such as, when am I going to die and how can I put that day off? And as you will see, the answer is not what we expect. Julianne Holt- Lunstad is a researcher at Brigham Young University and she addressed this very question in a series of studies of tens of thousands of middle aged people much like this audience here. And she looked at every aspect of their lifestyle: their diet, their exercise, their marital status, how often they went to the doctor, whether they smoked or drank, etc. She recorded all of this and then she and her colleagues sat tight and waited for seven years to see who would still be breathing. And of the people left standing, what reduced their chances of dying the most? That was her question. 07:20 So let's now look at her data in summary, going from the least powerful predictor to the strongest. OK? So clean air, which is great, it doesn't predict how long you will live. Whether you have your hypertension treated is good. Still not a strong predictor. Whether you're lean or overweight, you can stop feeling guilty about this, because it's only in third place. How much exercise you get is next, still only a moderate predictor. Whether you've had a cardiac event and you're in rehab and exercising, getting higher now. Whether you've had a flu vaccine. Did anybody here know that having a flu vaccine protects you more than doing exercise? Whether you were drinking and quit, or whether you're a moderate drinker, whether you don't smoke, or if you did, whether you quit, and getting towards the top predictors are two features of your social life. First, your close relationships. These are the people that you can call on for a loan if you need money suddenly, who will call the doctor if you're not feeling well or who will take you to the hospital, or who will sit with you if you're having an existential crisis, if you're in despair. Those people, that little clutch of people are a strong predictor, if you have them, of how long you'll live. And then something that surprised me, something that's called social integration. This means how much you interact with people as you move through your day. How many people do you talk to? And these mean both your weak and your strong bonds, so not just the people you're really close to, who mean a lot to you, but, like, do you talk to the guy who every day makes you your coffee? Do you talk to the postman? Do you talk to the woman who walks by your house every day with her dog? Do you play bridge or poker, have a book club? Those interactions are one of the strongest predictors of how long you'll live. 09:27 Now, this leads me to the next question: if we now spend more time online than on any other activity, including sleeping, we're now up to 11 hours a day, one hour more than last year, by the way, does it make a difference? Why distinguish between interacting in person and interacting via social media? Is it the same thing as being there if you're in contact constantly with your kids through text, for example? Well, the short answer to the question is no, it's not the same thing. Face-to-face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters, and like a vaccine, they protect you now in the present and well into the future. So simply making eye contact with somebody, shaking hands, giving somebody a high- five is enough to release oxytocin, which increases your level of trust and it lowers your cortisol levels. So it lowers your stress. And dopamine is generated, which gives us a little high and it kills pain. It's like a naturally produced morphine. 10:35 Now, all of this passes under our conscious radar, which is why we conflate online activity with the real thing. But we do have evidence now, fresh evidence, that there is a difference. So let's look at some of the neuroscience. Elizabeth Redcay, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, tried to map the difference between what goes on in our brains when we interact in person versus when we're watching something that's static. And what she did was she compared the brain function of two groups of people, those interacting live with her or with one of her research associates in a dynamic conversation, and she compared that to the brain activity of people who were watching her talk about the same subject but in a canned video, like on YouTube. And by the way, if you want to know how she fit two people in an MRI scanner at the same time, talk to me later. 11:28 So what's the difference? This is your brain on real social interaction. What you're seeing is the difference in brain activity between interacting in person and taking in static content. In orange, you see the brain areas that are associated with attention, social intelligence -- that means anticipating what somebody else is thinking and feeling and planning -- and emotional reward. And these areas become much more engaged when we're interacting with a live partner. 12:02 Now, these richer brain signatures might be why recruiters from Fortune 500 companies evaluating candidates thought that the candidates were smarter when they heard their voices compared to when they just read their pitches in a text, for example, or an email or a letter. Now, our voices and body language convey a rich signal. It shows that we're thinking, feeling, sentient human beings who are much more than an algorithm. Now, this research by Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago Business School is quite amazing because it tells us a simple thing. If somebody hears your voice, they think you're smarter. I mean, that's quite a simple thing. 12:47 Now, to return to the beginning, why do women live longer than men? And one major reason is that women are more likely to prioritize and groom their face-to- face relationships over their lifespans. Fresh evidence shows that these in-person friendships create a biological force field against disease and decline. And it's not just true of humans but their primate relations, our primate relations as well. Anthropologist Joan Silk's work shows that female baboons who have a core of female friends show lower levels of stress via their cortisol levels, they live longer and they have more surviving offspring. At least three stable relationships. That was the magic number. Think about it. I hope you guys have three. 13:34 The power of such face-to-face contact is really why there are the lowest rates of dementia among people who are socially engaged. It's why women who have breast cancer are four times more likely to survive their disease than loners are. Why men who've had a stroke who meet regularly to play poker or to have coffee or to play old-timer's hockey -- I'm Canadian, after all -- 14:00 (Laughter) 14:01 are better protected by that social contact than they are by medication. Why men who've had a stroke who meet regularly -- this is something very powerful they can do. This face-to-face contact provides stunning benefits, yet now almost a quarter of the population says they have no one to talk to. 14:21 We can do something about this. Like Sardinian villagers, it's a biological imperative to know we belong, and not just the women among us. Building in-person interaction into our cities, into our workplaces, into our agendas bolsters the immune system, sends feel-good hormones surging through the bloodstream and brain and helps us live longer. I call this building your village, and building it and sustaining it is a matter of life and death. Thank you. 14:54 (Applause) (Susan Pinker walking off the stage) 15:00 Helen Walters: Susan, come back. I have a question for you. I'm wondering if there's a middle path. So you talk about the neurotransmitters connecting when in face-to-face, but what about digital technology? We've seen enormous improvements in digital technology like FaceTime, things like that. Does that work too? I mean, I see my nephew. He plays Minecraft and he's yelling at his friends. It seems like he's connecting pretty well. Is that useful? Is that helpful? 15:23 Susan Pinker: Some of the data are just emerging. The data are so fresh that the digital revolution happened and the health data trailed behind. So we're just learning, but I would say there are some improvements that we could make in the technology. For example, the camera on your laptop is at the top of the screen, so for example, when you're looking into the screen, you're not actually making eye contact. So something as simple as even just looking into the camera can increase those neurotransmitters, or maybe changing the position of the camera. So it's not identical, but I think we are getting closer with the technology. 15:57 HW: Great. Thank you so much. 15:59 SP: Thank you. 16:00 (Applause)
The Italian island of Sardinia has more than six times as many centenarians as the mainland and ten times as many as North America. Why? According to psychologist Susan Pinker, it's not a sunny disposition or a low-fat, gluten-free diet that keeps the islanders healthy -- it's their emphasis on close personal relationships and face-to-face interactions. Learn more about super longevity as Pinker explains what it takes to live to 100 and beyond.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Susan Pinker · Developmental psychologist
Susan Pinker reveals how in-person social interactions are not only necessary for human happiness but also could be a key to health and longevity.
David Snowdon tracked almost 700 Wisconsin nuns from the order of The School Sisters of Notre Dame since the mid 1980s. Armed with information about their family backgrounds, education, relationships, writing skills, and ultimately, their autopsied brains, Snowdon tells an unforgettable story--filled with epiphanies--about how to live a meaningful and connected life.
Social neuroscientist John Cacioppo, along with writer William Patrick, do a masterful job in, in illustrating how loneliness impairs our ability to learn and make decisions, and how social isolation leaves a damaging biological footprint on every cell of our bodies.
This book tells a compelling story about the lifelong friendships of 11 women, who sustain their bonds across the distances that divide them, divorce, illness, and all the inconceivable obstacles life throws their way. In an era when people conflate time with friends with hours spent on Facebook with "friends," we get accounts of how women can use social media to enhance their relationships, not replace them.
One hot August day just weeks before my book was published, Marc and I were in steamy Washington DC for a live NPR interview, which is where we learned that our books had a common theme: how weak social bonds are as critical as our tight relationships in preserving healthy individuals and a healthy society. Marc's book makes a powerful case that without conversations and relationships with people from different backgrounds and political leanings, we can't function as a civil society.
Nicholas Christakis and John Fowler Little, Brown, 2009
I could not have made the case for the transformative effect of face-to-face interaction without the empirical work of these two research powerhouses. Any one serious about learning the mechanisms behind social contagion should read this book.
Footnotes
"In the developed world, everywhere, women live an average of six to eight years longer than men do."
"A third of the population says they have two or fewer people to lean on."
"Small networks and high isolation? A reexamination of American Discussion Networks," M.E. Brashears, Social Networks, 2011
"Social isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades," M. McPherson, L. Smith-Lovin, and M.E. Brashears, American Sociological Review, 2006
"I wondered: so is that what it takes to live to be 100 or beyond, thinking positively?"
"And I quickly discovered by being there that in the blue zone, as people age, and indeed across their lifespans, they're always surrounded by extended family, by friends, by neighbors, the priest, the barkeeper, the grocer."
Searching for longevity determinants: Following survival of newborns in an inland village in Sardinia, Luisa Salaris, Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2009
"And of the people left standing, what reduced their chances of dying the most?"
"So simply making eye contact with somebody, shaking hands, giving somebody a high-five is enough to release oxytocin, which increases your level of trust and it lowers your cortisol levels."
"Elizabeth Redcay, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, tried to map the difference between what goes on in our brains when we interact in person versus when we're watching something that's static."
"Now, these richer brain signatures might be why recruiters from Fortune 500 companies evaluating candidates thought that the candidates were smarter when they heard their voices compared to when they just read their pitches in a text, for example, or an email or a letter."
"Anthropologist Joan Silk's work shows that female baboons who have a core of female friends show lower levels of stress via their cortisol levels, they live longer and they have more surviving offspring."
One thing i want to say : life is so short and human is gradually killing
their longevity. Although they know this, they still live with their habits.
One simply reason, they dont find real joy in this life. Their thoughts
is that living is to live.
Some live longer and longer because they live in mindfulness and
mindfulness meditation. Therefore, their eyes always this life with
gratefulness and respect. They always try their best to contact with
people and nature. Others let their body and souls close to together
in every breathe and every footstep. The means that they care to
their existence. Thus, they understand how to live well and they limit
all their bad habits . More importantly, their thoughts and mind is free
and relaxed.
Disease comes from souls and disease is treated from souls.
Therefore, let our souls healthy with good and beautiful thoughts. We
will live longer and longer. More importantly, don't forget to
communicate joyfully to everybody.
Theodore A. Hoppe
Posted 6 months ago
This is anecdotal at best unless you can provide some
substantiation.
JZ
Jon Ziegler
Posted 5 months ago
In reply to:
This is anectdotal at best unless you can provide some
Great talk! If social isolation leads to decline, what does it do to senior
parents when their kids immigrate, to countries that reject senior
parents of immigrants? I am a skilled immigrant in Canada, and I
eventually realised that the Canadian government misrepresented its
immigration program. It claimed to be the country where we can
reunite with senior parents. That was the lure away from productive
careers elsewhere.
As it turned out , there is a common Canadian believe that immigrants
should be happy to give their parents for the privilege of living in
Canada, and it's a racist preposterous idea. This idea shortchanges
our parents out of the emotional and financial reward they deserve
after they lovingly dedicated themselves to saving our future. We grow
up adoring them, eager to reward them, only to see them labelled as
"burden" in the countries we migrate too. The Canadian government
never calculated or asked to pay a sum of back taxes to cover for the
productive years are parents did not spend here, and make up for any
financial deficit if they here. They just assumed we would gladly pay
for Western mortgages but nit our for parents but. Just in the case of
Canadian residential schools, the local culture took that personal
decision for us.
As this talk demonstrates, happiness is not giving up a foreign parent
for Western consumerism, or watching Canadians cherish their
parents, when ours are falsely labelled a "burden". They invested in us
yet it's immigration countries that cashed in, as we contribute to their
GDP. This makes immigration countries a burden on foreign parents of
immigrants, not the other way around.
Your answer is at par with the blank stares and the silence we
get from people when we bring up our foreign parents. To
Western society, our parents are invisible, a non-issue, they
are not entitled to matter. This is crushing to the parents who
dedicated themselves to us and secured our future against all
odds, in struggling countries . Little did we or did they know
how they will be dismissed by the cultures we migrate to.
In fact, instead of having Canada (for example) claim that as
Canadian immigrants we could sponsor our parents (then
back out of that claim), it would be more fair and honest if
Canada wrote exactly what you said on their immigration
website : "what?". "You value your parents and want to
reward them for securing your future?! We do not condone
that, they absolutely do not count and nor does everything
they did for you, not in our society". That would drop the
number of visa applications instantly!
I would really appreciate an honest (and condescending )
"what? " on all immigration websites, in answer to
immigrants saying that we migrate mainly to better reward
our parents. We wouldn't be shocked or let down if
immigration departments showed their true beliefs in the
first place, and we would then be better prepared to
protect our goals to cherish our parents.
NL
Norm De Lue
Posted 6 months ago
The leading causes of global deaths are heart attack and strokes. It is
hard for me to believe that social interactions will overcome the poor
life decisions promulgating these diseases.
Theodore A. Hoppe
Posted 6 months ago
I thought this issue was already settled.
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100
CC
Cari Corbet-Owen
Posted 6 months ago
There is so much research starting to back this up. Centenarians don't
obsess about their diets, juice or eat goji berries, not do they gym
obsessively....in fact if anything they're quite laid back about what they
eat. I have to say though that I'm prepared to bet that that gruff old
man might not be quite the sourpuss once people know him.
Maria Ruzsane Cseresnyes
Posted 6 days ago
There are introverted and extroverted people. I am curious about,
whether the personal interaction has the same significance in both
groups of people, or is there any difference? I mean, perhaps
extroverted people prefer writing e-mail to talking to someone.
SW
Sean Wilson
Posted 19 days ago
Recently my scientific curiosity was piqued after viewing this edited
short piece from the TED talk by Susan Pinker where she explored the
‘least to strongest predictors of reducing your chances of dying’ (in her
presentation titled “The secret to living longer may be your social life”);
particularly her claims regarding the effects of exercise/physical
activity on mortality. Let me be clear. It not my intention to dispute the
central argument of Pinker’s presentation - i.e. the pivotal role that
social relationships, social connectedness and social isolation have on
our health, as the data strongly suggests that this is so. I have chosen
to focus on her claims made regarding exercise as this is of primary
interest to me as an Exercise Scientist, and as such, I wanted to
confirm that what was presented actually reflected the current body of
evidence and the latest science published in this area. My contention
is that what she presented in the above mentioned presentation does
not in fact do this. I have not researched whether the effect sizes
presented for the other things (such as smoking, alcohol, obesity etc)
hold up. I did initially suspect that the effect size reported for exercise
was outdated. After assessing the research and literature with which
these claims are based upon, there are a number of erroneous claims
made and outdated science used that, in my opinion, require critique
and comment. To read full commentary see http://fitgreystrong.com/ dont-believe-everything-you-watch-even-if-it-is-a-ted-talk/
AJ
Alexandra Jaffe
Posted 20 days ago
I am a firm believer in healthy lifestyle (exercise, eating well) and
sociability as features of wellbeing and health.
However, there are millions of people like me out there who have all
these things and have cancer. Sorry, the cancer is going to kill me
no matter how good my social networks are.
JM
Joe Malone
Posted 5 months ago
Very interesting and true I believe. The experiential and research
insights presented here are very important for all of us who live in
this digital age. Lifestyle alterations in the direction of more face-to-
face, personally relevant relationships should be within most people's
grasp. We just have to be wise and rearrange our priorities.
Thank you Susan Pinker for your work and for pointing this out to
those of us who will listen!
JZ
Jon Ziegler
Posted 5 months ago
The secret to living longer might be a flourishing social life, e.g., bridge
club, church, a new career after retirement, and other such activities.
But I would bet a lot of the factors of us hitting 100 lie in our DNA.
Athena Maya-Roman
Posted 5 months ago
I highly agree with what she says because it's true even having three
people that you highly interact with can make a significant difference
in you everyday lives opposed to being lonely, like happiness instead
of isolation. This makes me think differently of how I should live my
life but i'm basically doing the same, keeping strong strings tied with
friends as well as family.
HS
Hadi Saeedi
Posted 6 months ago
I had read about the relation between "visiting and devotion to
relatives" and "longevity" before, in the quotes of Prophet of Islam
(PBUH) and Imams. And it is very interesting for me to see this talk
which somehow proved them. Thanks for this talk.
LF
LeBron-Willy Fang
Posted 6 months ago
Thanks for your wonderful and precious speech!
BB
Biddut Bhowmic
Posted 6 months ago
Great talk and very encouraging to those people who want to live
longer with trying their best by eating proper food, doing regular
physical and mental exercise but unfortunately little known about
how to get longevity.
AM
Athena Maya-Roman
Posted 5 months ago
and human contact is a lovely thing!
MA
Mohamed Akrb
Posted 6 months ago
Cutting off Relations with Relatives is a Major Sin in Islam Religion
The prophet Mohamed said that 1400 years ago " If you want Allah
to increase your longevity , you should visit your relatives " you can
Use google for precise facts
We already knew that stress is one of the biggest health hazards, birds
and horses alike can die from just stress easily.
But we also know and are learning more and more about the critical
role of bacteria for our immune system.
One treatment for chronic diarrhea and likely other illnesses and
conditions is transplantation of gut-bacteria.
So I'm wondering, could it be that social interactions are only
correlations for good health, and the causal relationship is really in
low stress and perhaps exchange of diversity of bacteria that keep
us healthy? Is that perhaps why physical interactions are more
beneficial than through social media?
Regardless, individualism, and loneliness because of it, is definitely a
growing problem as our population ages. Here in the Netherlands we
have physically healthy people requesting euthanasia, just because of
loneliness. And our government is actually seriously considering
facilitating such requests, as currently euthanasia is allowed only
under strict conditions, has to be terminal, has to be no hope of cure
and improvement or sustainability, families are consulted, mental
health and all is considered. But this possible easing of requirements
is a horrible solution for a social problem.
MA
Mohamed Akrb
Posted 6 months ago
Good social life helps us to burn the stress , therefore we will
decrease the cortisone level and off course that will reduce
adrenaline levels . talking with neighbour about your problem
helps you to burn your stress hazards .and also You can
achieve that by playing sports.
substantiation.