A lifetime of social ties adds up to healthy aging
news.cornell.edu
news.cornell.edu
I've never been to AA, but I'm told it's the cues that get you, and I do admit the memories of beers + guitar hero or other such nonsense from old days is exactly what I want every time I open a beer.
It's like that old rat experiment, where they gave them cocaine or heroine laced water + regular water, and they always preferred the the drugs, until there was a rich social life / environment, at which point they rarely did.
Socializing is powerful stuff if you can find enough time to build up enough trust to just have a heap of fun for a few hours. I swear a side-splitting laugh fest adds years to your life. When is the last time you laughed so hard with friends you couldn't breathe?
Wait, with a budget of €100 000 I could actually get some second-hand old shitty Ferrari. That's... surprisingly affordable. I mean buying this shit right now would be highly irresponsible, but I can see myself potentially buying one in far future.
I just checked Lamborghini Murciélago, the dream sportscar of my childhood, and it goes for like €300 000. Hmmm... that's like, a lot of money for what is basically a toy, but if I really really really wanted that, it would be achievable within my lifetime without completely ruining me financially.
https://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/details.html?id=432670758...
Look at this shit, it's beautiful. €260 000. Not now and not tomorrow, but totally achievable as a lifetime goal.
What a day to be alive. Having a luxury sportscar is more realistic than having friends. Send immaterial help.
In this case, I'm guessing the first minor bit of body damage [gravel, whatever] or consumable replacements [tires, brakes, etc]. Ignoring the financial pressure/means aspect, preferences are what they are. Tire pressure, cleanliness, or what-have-you.
Personally, I wouldn't buy a Lamborghini without breaking it/rebuilding several times over. Fancy car, want to see what it really has. Other people? Baby it to no end because it's so precious. They got a date tonight.
All this to say: an old rustbox [or several] is probably the better group project. What little I knew of my Dad: demo derby, sounded great.
Both were recently in the market for new cars. As a car enthusiast, I told them to YOLO and buy something like a 911.
But no, they got a staid huge BMW sedan and a staid huge Benz SUV respectively, despite neither of them ever likely to use the back seats at all.
Speaking of living longer: I’ve had my fill of fast cars already, but how about an airplane? I watched some guys fly Piper Cubs in Alaska. That looked fun as hell. https://youtu.be/XXuIA_b35fs
Perhaps I’ll buy one of those. They aren’t so expensive.
Today, I love sports cars. I’ve had a few fast cars, and owning a 911 is on my bucket list.
Funny enough, I have no interest in learning to fly. Though I’m still very into military aviation as a topic.
Maybe it’s because the delta between say, a 911 and a racecar is smaller than that between a civilian prop plane and a fighter jet?
For me it'd be more because the first three are pastimes, the fourth one is a job.
You don't get to own a fighter jet and fly it around the world doing stunts or taking in sights just because you can; you can't take your friends or loved ones with you either. You are granted the right to fly an expensive piece of government property, whose operating costs can be counted in average taxpayer's annual income tax per hour. You fly where you're told, when you're told, how you're told. The point it gets most exciting, the point where you are granted most authority over your mission, is the point where you're shooting at someone or being shot at.
The movies make it look like all four things you mentioned are fundamentally the same in terms of feelings of freedom. It's not the only case. Adult me got disillusioned about a lot of career paths I dreamed of as a kid :(.
In that I still love (classic) cars, I still love (sim) racing, at the same time that I absolutely despise car-centric infrastructure and urbanism as one of the great catastrophes of the 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
There are criticisms of it, some of which are in the criticisms section of the Wikipedia article, and look to be valid.
I never liked when people talked about debunking an experiment that was honestly done and just needed refutation or at least correction. If researchers publish research that was honestly done and then later found to have statistical flaws, or that is disproved with a larger sample size or whatever, I wouldn’t say it had been debunked. I’d say it was refuted or corrected or refined or whatever. If it was a “research” study where the group publishing it knew is was junk designed to promote an agenda or sell a product, then the term debunked is fair.
The lead researcher of Rat Park a few years later delivered me from the womb. My dad was doing his PhD there at SFU at the time.
2 weeks ago in Oaxaca with some friends. We were at dinner and one (a guy) mentioned the Mormon purity defying practice of soaking which sparked confusion from the other (a girl). So he explained it in Mandarin so the others in the restaurant wouldn’t understand. It’s not a language I speak but watching her face told me everything I needed to know.
With no context, I highly recommend finding a comedy club near you and having a few drinks. It might take several attempts though so don't give up
It’s how teens fuck while keeping Jesus’ approval.
Your reaction is a sane and normal one: you remember a good time, and you have some inkling to recreate it. Certainly. And to most people that makes sense. But alcoholics are different from most people, and their understanding that is an essential first step to recovery.
If you are one, though, there's nothing gonna keep you from the drink, except total abstinence, and some kind of structure (AA, NA, Church, Martial Arts, etc.).
I'm a recovering addict (over 45 years), and participate in Fellowship. Gives me tremendous socialization.
Don't you just mean social activities? You don't need to accept metaphysical dogmas or engage in scheduled physical combat with other people to socialize.
Sure, go ahead and do whatever you think works. If you're an alcoholic, it either will, or won't, work; with [rewards|consequences] to follow.
If you're not, it probably won't hurt. In fact, it could definitely enrich your life.
I have learned that addicts (and alcoholics are just alcohol addicts), need a lot more than just "socialization."
Most folks have no idea how to address true addiction.
Well, they have "ideas," but very few are at all effective.
> "The fact that I have no remedy for all the sorrows of the world is no reason for my accepting yours. It simply supports the strong probability that yours is a fake."
> "There's always an easy solution to every human problem; Neat, plausible and wrong."
- H. L. Mencken
I certainly don't claim to have all the answers, but I know one that works for me, and I have seen a lot of people fail; often, spectacularly. It really is one of those "If I have to explain, you wouldn't understand." things.
> You also mention true addiction, do you mean physical addiction (as opposed to psychological)?
True addiction has nothing to do with physical dependence. That’s actually a by-product of addiction. It’s entirely possible to be an addict, without ever becoming physically dependent, and also, you can become physically dependent, without becoming an addict. That happens frequently, in pain management.
But a lot of folks have their minds already set in stone, here. Lots of moralizing and theories get tossed around, while addicts die, and destroy the lives of others.
I’m not going to try explaining it here. I’ve been at this, longer than many folks have been alive, and am quite aware of the futility of trying to graft new ideas onto closed minds. I’m really too busy, helping folks out, that want it.
> It is certainly possible that what worked for you won't work on everyone else
Absolutely, but it has worked for millions, so it does have some effectiveness.
It's not really complex, it's like anything else you'd study - mindful, focused practice; pay attention to details; iterate.
I personally find alcohol to be vastly overrated for removing inhibitions. A few drinks and I'm still as tightly wound as ever. A lot of drinks and I end up having all sorts of unpleasant bodily effects instead.
The upside is that I've been suicidal since I was 15 so if Johnny Reaper comes in the form of loneliness cancer I'll have been done a subtle favor.
Also it's just an aside but God isn't real.
I find being alone wonderful.
-Steven Patrick Morrissey
(this always gets brought up every single time, like a mantra that people have to keep saying to convince themselves. So it's on my bingo card.)
If you're going to talk shit don't end your sentence with a conceptual preposition. You're making us all look bad."
#AFVP
The causation is obviously in the other direction: Healthy people socialize more.
Proposing the inverted causation, without even examining the alternative is ridiculous. This is just trash science.
Having a correlational result and using it to pretend that one has to cause the other with absolutely no mechanism is not science, it is reading tea leaves.
A healthy person has more opportunities and more abilities to engage in social activities. The less healthy a person becomes the rarer those opportunities become. Basically every single health condition, especially the most common ones like obesity, make it harder for people to engage in social activity.
The alternative explanation is pretty simple and does not require some magical mechanism whereby social interactions are somehow causing your body to age slower.
The study says social bonds are associated with lower inflammation. It's well documented that inflammation causes anxiety and depression. How does this affect one's social activity? Negatively, the mechanism is very clear - you don't socialize if you are depressed and anxious. And somehow they assume the reverse casual relationship without explaining the mechanism for it.
Certainly introverts who are healthy socialize more. And the idea of an introvert as someone who blatantly refuses social interaction is ridiculous.
Just search instead for 100 duck-sized horses capable of tiny acts of kindness and understanding. Much higher success rate, much lower variance.
Meanwhile, someone with the same experience, even if not friend, will be able to understand much more and more easily.
It is not so much about some moral or relational failure on their side, it is simply that it is impossible to imagine feelings and situations you never had.
Acquaintances, though, I have many. Many of I talk to regularly, but would never consider them a friend, because well, I know almost nothing personal about them. A former boss that I meet up with anytime we are in the same city for dinner and drinks, I've known for nearly 20 years, but I don't know his wife's name, I know he has 4 kids, and I've met them all in passing, but no clue what their names are, etc.
Maybe I'm weird, and maybe I'm a bit lonely, and maybe it has taken a couple decades to realize I squandered all of my in-build friends from childhood, but I'm not sure I'd do it differently. I've had a semi-successful life, and most of my high school friends still live in their hometown, have dead-end manual labor jobs, or have died/disappeared from drug use.
Therapy tells me I pre-reject friendship so friendship doesn't reject me, and I agree with it, but don't feel like changing the pattern.
LOL that would describe me perfectly as well I think. I have not had "close" friends since I was in my early 20s. Then everyone moved away and we all started our separate lives.
The next group of friends came along when I had kids, and parents naturally became friendly because we would see each other at kids activities, sports, etc.
Then the kids grew up, and there was nothing bringing that group of people together anymore. I still see and talk to one or two of them but it's pretty infrequent.
Now, the idea of maintaining a real, close friendship just sounds like too much work. I'm happy enough just living my life on my terms.
Most friendships are just formed of the people we see regularly due to circumstance. They may be pleasant but they are not deep, and they will fall apart as soon as circumstances change.
Its not great but also not a huge problem - I believe now I have some amount of Schizotypal personality spectrum, and have all my life, though I never admit that to most people IRL since the label freaks people out.
In other words, friends won't drop into your lap. You have to go where fish are actually biting and cast out your line.
Someone leaving after x did something they dont like ... may just be former real friend with a backbone and moral values.
if they can't confront someone for what they think is a mistake, then it's them who have no backbone, and potentially also the enabler, because you can't change someones behavior by walking away from them.
Over years I lost contact to all the ppl I considered friends.
I dont have time to nurture long distance relationships.
After studies we all moved away 200-300km from each other.
I have a lot of „pals” or „gaming friends”. But those ppl wont show up 4am at night to pick you up from a street fight.
I’m missing „meaningful” connections. Its easy to find ppl who dont care.
I just have absolutely zero friends or interactions with people who aren’t my wife and kids. Haven’t for probably 15 years now. I work remotely and 99% of the people I work with are offshore so very little overlap in work times. So the occasional teams message on a group channel is it. No friends or even acquaintances. I occasionally find myself craving the little notification icon on X to let me know some stranger liked my post. I recognize that this is not optimal.
The gym is essentially my hobby but max interaction is the occasional fist bump or head nod. I spend 90 minutes there 6 days a week.
Its to the point where other people aren’t even real to me anymore, I can go literally months without a real life conversation.
Not complaining but it does worry me from the longevity aspect
The other suggestion is to not worry about who initiates what. I make it a habit of reaching out to people and don’t mind if I am the one doing so the majority of the time. It is so easy, for me at least, to fall into the trap of keeping track to make sure the people “care enough”.
Hope that helps and hopefully my entirely unasked for advice wasn’t inappropriate. Only responding because I am a similar age and struggled with the same.
The rest seemed like friends while we attended the same church, but quickly vanished as soon as we left (the particular church, not the faith). Maybe more of those relationships could have been nurtured to last if given more effort, but as both my wife and I are introverts, it wasn’t easy.
I’m in my early 40s now. We still attend church, but we find the whole social aspect of it draining. We attend worship…then go home.
So not too much of a surprise there.
Edit: still valuable to do research even to confirm whatever seems to follow logically. Not trying to discredit that!
Edit: What about social rejection? Surely that might be a better variable than “social ties”.
neuroimmunology is very cool, look into it
there are nerves which directly contact macrophages and other immune cells in the spleen and it's not clear why
What I suspect is common WRT these studies is lonely people become self-destructive, reaching for stuff like alcohol and/or comfort eating, i.e. harmful substitutes for relationships they miss.
But I don't really have those issues. I can be super content spending most time solitary with regular impersonal interactions at cafes and grocery stores. Just having a modicum of peaceful sharing of space with others tops up my socializing needs, beyond that it's fast into diminishing returns territory.
- extremely introverted person who never developed a dependence on others for self-worth and/or happiness
A simple snapshot assessment and some scoring of an individual's (entire, self-reported!) social life is too simplistic. The measurements would have to be performed throughout the life of each participant with sufficiently high frequency.
Why it happens is less clear. It could be stress effects, or it could be something like people with more social support are more likely to get help going in for preventative care etc.
So the finding here is that healthy, wealthy people with a support network age just like healthy, wealthy people with a support network.
> All models adjusted for demographic and socioeconomic variables selected a priori for their potential to confound associations between CSA and biological aging indicators. Covariates included age (in years), sex (male vs. female), race/ethnicity (White, Black, Other), educational attainment (12-point ordinal scale), and log-transformed current household income (USD). These variables were treated as exogenous predictors—assumed to temporally precede both CSA and biological outcomes—and were included to block potential backdoor paths and minimize bias.
> [...]
> Educational attainment and income reflect stratified access to material and psychosocial resources that affect both health behavior and biological risk processes (Adler and Newman, 2002). Treating these covariates as exogenous minimizes bias due to confounding while avoiding over-adjustment for potential mediators or introducing collider bias (Schisterman et al., 2009).
that's kind of interesting, though very far from the causal claims in the university press release.
Let's look at something else which wasn't controlled for at all: doing physical activities.
People who, for example, run every week or bike every week often do so because they have a group of friends who also does that, and doing such a physical activity also builds friendships better than not doing such activities.
Perhaps exercising is both correlated with health and with building groups of friends.
Or perhaps exercising is correlated with being attractive, and being attractive is correlated with building social connections.
... I guess what I'm trying to say here is that this study shows correlation only, and there are so many confounding factors I consider it pretty tenuous.
"Healthy systemic accumulated damage" is therefore a more honest way to put it, exposing it as completely ridiculous.
Thank goodness that longevity efforts have now become well established biotech and pharma goals around the world.
It's like, you actually can describe one of two burgers as "healthier" even though they're both unhealthy. One is just less harmful. It's a valid use of language.
The few that come to mind are laughter, stress, exercise, and cognitive engagement.
It might be interesting to see if diet changes as a result of social ties as well. We can make an educated guess that stronger social ties means less time eating alone.
Surely it isn't just the social ties themselves.
Obligatory "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
Obligatory link https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266635462...
People in the Greek or Italian blue zones, would let you take away their daily wine drinking with buddies over their 100+ year old dead body...
(Though for the "blue zones", I've read some suspicions that the true secret of them is plain old corruption - with some of the "supercentenarians" having died long ago and only living on in the records, so family, friends or complicit buerocrats can collect their pensions. Not sure if this is widespread enough to explain the entire effect though)
But… there is one thing that seems to hold up. One of Buettner claims is that as western ultra processed diets came to these enclaves and displaced traditional diets, incidence rates of obesity and metabolic disease has spiked. That’s real.
I bet we could measure a parallel effect on social media displacing real social activity wherever it goes.
Yeah, no disagreement here. It would be a miracle if a food that is designed and produced with the only intention to have people eat as much of it as possible had no bad consequences. That's before all the biological evidence we have.
The processed food/obesity debate seems similar to me to the climate debate. The evidence is well-researched and mostly very clear and most of the "debate" around the topic is with people who want to muddy the waters because they have personal stakes in it in some way - be it financial, political or psychological.
I mean, I've met old but still active Italians - it's not the wine that enabled them to stay healthy this long. Italians by and large drink less than other Europeans anyway.
That's just racist (those lazy-cheating southerners) bullshit "myth-busting" attempt that does the rounds. There was no different between these areas and others nearby with regards to pension fraud (or with regards to them being specially prone to it) that explains this. And there were no pensions to be had for those people well into the 1980s anyway, meanwhile everybody in those rural places knows everybody else since children...
Hailing from a much poorer country than Italy I can assure you, you can have everyone in on it.
I've spent four years in (northern) Italy and was impressed by the level of cleverness they displayed going around their overbuilt bureaucracy and tax system. It was both impressive and familiar really.
Not something normally admirable, but the Italian government (whichever might be in power at the moment) seems to think it's still 2005 or so and that the middle class will just take whatever is thrown at them.
Gee thanks Science, you see now why people prefer Stupidity over you?