Get healthy by making your relationship better

Most of us know the advice for leading a healthier life: Exercise, eat a balanced diet, get enough sleep, have regular doctor check-ups, don’t smoke, don’t drink to excess. But there is one piece of advice that is not generally given: have more (and better) relationships. The benefits to your health may surprise you.

A landmark paper published in Science by House, Landis, & Umberson (1988) showed that after controlling for how much people smoke, physical health status, SES, alcohol consumption, physical activity, obesity, race, life satisfaction, and the use of preventive health services how socially integrated you were was a significant predictor of all cause mortality. The more you had friends and associates, the more likely you were to live longer. In fact those who were relatively low on the social integration scale were twice as likely to die compared to those who were relatively high on the social integration scale.

While having more relationships in your life is good, having good relationships is even better. Marriages that have higher levels of negative and hostile behaviors had higher levels of cardiovascular activity, poorer physiological stress response, and dysregulated immune functioning (Robles & Kiecolt-Glaser, 2003). Individuals who have risky early family environments (high conflict, low support) are more likely to experience higher rates of physical health disorders later in life (Lehman, Taylor, Kiefe, & Seeman, 2005). Having daily interactions with friends or associates who elicit both positive and negative feelings relates to higher blood pressure (Holt-Lunstad, Uchino, Smith, Olson-Cerny, & Nealey-Moore, 2003).

Having relationships benefits our health, having good relationships benefits our health even more. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t eat better, exercise, and stop smoking, but in trying to lead a healthy lifestyle, you also need to attention to the relationships in your life.

Further Reading:

Holt-Lunstad, J., Uchino, B, N., Smith, T. W., Olson-Cerny, C., Nealey-Moore, J. B. (2003). Social relationships and ambulatory blood pressure: Structural and qualitative predictors of cardiovascular function during everyday social interaction. Health Psychology, 22, 388-397.

House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. (1988). Social relationships and health. Science, 241, 540-545.

Lehman, B. J., Taylor, S. E., Kiefe, C. I., & Seeman, T. (2005). Relation of childhood socioeconomic status and family environment to adult metabolic functioning in the CARDIA study, Psychosomatic Medicine, 67, 846-854.

Robles, T. F., Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2003). The physiology of marriage: pathways to health. Physiology and Behavior, 79, 409-416.