StemCell Therapy

No doubt youve heard some version of this question before:

Will you have enough for all the fulfillment and fun you hope to enjoy through your fifties, sixties, seventies and beyond?

This time, though, the answer isnt about whether you have enough retirement savings, but instead focuses on what researchers find is equally crucial to well-being: Friends.

A host of research finds that when we have a strong social network, emotional and even physical health improves.

An AARP Public Policy Institute report, for instance, finds socially isolated Medicare holders cost roughly $130 per month in health spending. And a recent Michigan State University study finds that friends are a better predictor of health and happiness than family ties as we age.

How can others make such a wide impact? Well, explains William Rawlins, Stocker Professor of Interpersonal Communications, Ohio University: We are human beings, and were made to care about, enjoy and engage with other human beings.

But just as building retirement savings requires your time and attention, nurturing satisfying social connections does as well.

Stitching Together New Networks

When were younger, social interactions are plentiful: first in school and the neighborhood, then in the workplace, and for those who are parents connections through their children.

But those ready-made connections are vulnerable for those fifty-plus, since circumstances arise that can abruptly break social circles.

Retirement is the obvious disrupter, when dozens of work relationships can end when you close the office door for the last time.

Perhaps the greatest isolator, however, notes Jialu Streeter, researcher at the Stanford Center on Longevity, is a long stint of demanding caregiving.

I had very little social contact through the six years I spent caring for my father-in-law, relates Avis Brown, resident of Morgan Hill, California, who continually commuted to the East Coast for caregiving.

It is amazing when you are emersed in caregiving for that number of years, Brown explains, your brain shuts down in other areas. My friends were supportive but I wasnt reaching out to them.

In the years since her father-in-laws death, however, Brown has reactivated old friendships, and with her now retired husband, Dave, theyve forged new ones.

Indeed, the years re-shape social networks, but they are often more satisfying than ever.

Older people have a strong desire to seek meaning in life, Streeter explains, and thus they are more likely to move away or completely drop connections who are not important to them.

Here, a look at situations where connections can break, but which also provide an opportunity to keep and forge more meaningful ones:

1. Looking at retirement.

One of the key questions that Sara Zeff Geber, PhD, owner of LifeEncore, a retirement consulting service, asks her clients is: What percentage of your social connections are work related, and what percentage are based on other connections?

Answers, says Geber, vary from one end of the spectrum to the other.

For those who are still tied socially to work [colleagues], I suggest starting to shift that by reacquainting themselves with old friends who may have fallen off their radar, neighbors they never really met, and people from their place of worship.

Gyms are sometimes good places to form social connections, she adds. It just takes opening your mouth instead of keeping your head down and attending to business.

Brown, a former salesperson who readily admits, shy is not a term that applies to me, relates that she struck up conversation with a neighbor who she never had time to get to know previously.

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Read more from the original source:
The Healthy Power of Friendship: Why social connection might be the key to longevity - Helena Independent Record

This entry was posted on December 30, 2019 at 4:02 am and is filed under Longevity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |