7 ms·
A lifetime of social ties adds up to healthy aging
- Luc 1y agoFrom reading this it seems to me there is a wide gap between what happens at the molecular level and the social level, and they are very eager to jump it?
- iberator 1y ago>The cumulative effect of social advantages across a lifetime
- 2716057 1y agoAnecdotally I agree with the message, but the research looks weak indeed. 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.
- nicce 1y agoIf someone starts now, we may see results in 50 years?
- psychoslave 1y agoYou're the lucky guy today: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11852352/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11852352/
- derbOac 1y agoFor what it's worth, the dataset they used does in fact have measurements spanning 30 years of adulthood, and similar papers from that dataset leveraging the longitudinal data have found similar conclusions. 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.
- cornholio 1y agoSocial ties correlate with all kinds of beneficial traits, outcomes and privileges, in a very complex and bidirectional causal relation: sociable people have much better economic and career prospects, healthy middle class people have the opportunity, time and resources to engage in social activities, raising a family is a high energy activity not everybody can afford that basically "generates" a substantial web of social links, which in turn support the person in their gray years, and so on and so forth. So the finding here is that healthy, wealthy people with a support network age just like healthy, wealthy people with a support network.
- kixiQu 1y agoFTFS (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354625001541#sec2 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266635462...): > 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).
- currymj 1y agofrom a certain perspective, they've found that if I tell you nothing more about a person than their lab test results on some biomarkers, you can make a better-than-random educated guess about how much social connection they have in their lives. that's kind of interesting, though very far from the causal claims in the university press release.
- amelius 1y agoDoes social media presence also count?
- nenenejej 1y agoYes, each post negates one Sunday mass.
- coldtea 1y agoNo, only real social ties, that are there for you practically, and can hug you or help you move.
- amelius 1y agoTo the downvoters: have you run a clinical trial?
- rzzzt 1y agoThe journal mentioned in the article (Brain, Behavior and Immunity - Health) has a few submissions related to this topic, like the one that examines CRP levels and social media use: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37224891/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37224891/
- xg15 1y agoEven if your social ties are drinking buddies?
- coldtea 1y agoEspecially then. 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...
- xg15 1y agoHah, true. I guess it also shows the difference between social drinking and only hanging on the bottle by yourself. (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)
- coffeefirst 1y agoYeah, and to make matters funnier the Seventh Day Adventists bought the brand and added themselves to the list. 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.
- xg15 1y ago> 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. 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.
- nakedrobot2 1y agoHoly crap there is a boat load of spurious correlation here. Obligatory link https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- ricardobeat 1y agoSection 2 and 3 of the study[1] go deep into their analysis methods, you’ll need something a bit more solid than “I’ve read about correlation vs causation once” to counter it. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666354625001541 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266635462...
- zeofig 1y agoIs correlated with*
- qmr 1y agoDoes this mean I should encourage my beautiful young wife to join the local stitch and bitch? Obligatory "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
- balamatom 1y ago"If nobody needs you to be alive you will die faster" Gee thanks Science, you see now why people prefer Stupidity over you?
- coldtea 1y agoThe science part is determining that life situation "showed slower epigenetic aging and lower levels of chronic inflammation."
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rzzzt 1y agoWhat if I just want to spite my enemies with my continued existence? They will shake their fist angrily at the sky for decades to come.
- balamatom 1y agoHaving enemies is a symptom of chronic inflammation in more ways than one.
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- vachina 1y agoWell of course. When you feel you belong you don’t stress as much.
- card_zero 1y ago"there were no significant associations with short-term stress markers like cortisol or catecholamines."
- HPsquared 1y agoI wonder what fraction of people today have literally no friends (perhaps this could be examined using a questionnaire and points system to determine who counts as a real friend vs mere acquaintance). The number of people with "zero" must surely be rising, especially among the young.
- sigmoid10 1y agoI think it's more about the concept of mental isolation than some magic hard number of "friends" (whatever way you define it). You can have 100 close friends that you regularly talk to and hang out with in your free time and still have noone to talk to regarding certain issues. Speeking from a military/PTSD perspective, a single person who you might not even share that much with but who you can talk to about a particularly traumatic thing might be worth more than all close friends and family in the world. Because they will never understand what you really feel like since none of them have experienced it.
- SoftTalker 1y agoIt's a real test of how real a friendship is. There are lots of people who enjoy spending time together, talking, laughing, remembering the good times, everything's great. But start to open up about some real trauma and you will drive 90% of them away.
- jancsika 1y agoThat's easy. Just search instead for 100 duck-sized horses capable of tiny acts of kindness and understanding. Much higher success rate, much lower variance.
- 77pt77 1y ago[dead]
- rsanek 1y agoVaries by friend. Some are open to it, others not so much. In general I've found that talking about trauma with friends isn't very useful even if they are willing to engage.
- Herring 1y ago[flagged]
- nickpsecurity 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoWe respect everyone's right to their own religious (and indeed, ideological) convictions, but please don't invoke religion in order to make ideological arguments here. You've been doing it repeatedly, and it's not what HN is for.
- nickpsecurity 1y agoI do appreciate you looking out for the community. It's a strange rule for you to say a person's worldview can't be included in comments about how to live, effects of worldview's on society, and so on. Especially when the topic is community's effect on health with the parent comment exploring how our worldview drives our prioritization: "Car-centric lifestyle, few third places, low work-life balance, high and increasing inequality, underdeveloped social safety net, employer-tied social benefits, etc all tied together with American individualism. If we want prosocial, community-oriented behavior, we have to actually prioritize it." Either supporting a connected, loving society or responding to that comment requires a foundational justification for it. I noted that popular philosophies encourage selfishness, disconnects, anxiety, depression, and hate. Whereas, the older worldview, the Bible, produced individuals with more peace, work ethic, stable families with decades-long marriages, Western democracy (eg the Constitution), and so on. Solving the problem requires building on the right foundation (eg Christ & the truth). You mention you respect all's religious convictions with some censorship apparently but all claims shouldn't be treated the same. Jesus lives perfectly, works miracles, raises from the dead, and has biographical evidence approaching Julius Caeser. Then, His Gospel impacts 4,000 people groups with all of them reporting life transformations and miracles. Countries founded on Judeo-Christian principles turn out to be the best ones to live in with the most freedoms while the atheist, Buddhist, and Hindu countries still jail or kill those disagreeing with them. Scientific discoveries actually confirmed the Bible more, too. Whatever has strong evidence with high, global impact should always be allowed: https://www.gethisword.com/evidence.html https://www.gethisword.com/evidence.html The biggest issues, though, is we will all face the Lord Jesus Christ during Judgement Day. He promised every knee will bow, some willingly and others fearfully. He will render to each for their works, from day to day life up to moderation or lawmaking decisions. Our whole life might be replayed second by second with Him asking if each decision prioritized our God, His character, His truths, and love for others. So, we have to answer questions like "why have a lifetime of social ties? with God both designed us for and commanded us to love others as ourselves. Also, to bring them into fellowship with Jesus Christ for forgiveness of their sins, into the Church which is like a family, help with their earthly needs, and God uses them to do the same. It multiplies starting with hearing the Gospel and His truths. Jesus said "blessed are those who are not offended by me" so please don't be and please allow God's truths on Hacker News.
- TheDong 1y ago> Covariates. All models adjusted for ... age, sex, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, and log-transformed current household income. 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.
- ricardobeat 1y agoThat could be a factor, though 1) the study found no correlation with cortisol levels which is affected by exercise, and 2) income and education are highly correlated with physical activity levels already, so wouldn’t put too much hope on that.
- Insanity 1y agoHumans are social animals, and if I’m being pretty reductionist this paper states “being social is healthy for social animals. Being healthy means longer life spans”. 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!
- card_zero 1y agoI am neither social nor an animal. What exactly is the mechanism of action, what is it about going to church or whatever that decreases this nasty interleukin-6? And how can carried out most minimally, or made into pills?
- sylos 1y agoUnless you're a robot, you are a social animal
- card_zero 1y agoAnimal from the muppets is an animal. Animal from the Anti-Nowhere League is an animal. But the Elephant Man was not an animal, and neither am I. Moderation rules prohibit me from showing you how social I'm not.
- checker659 1y agoAlso, surely feeling part of a subreddit might also invoke the same processes? Edit: What about social rejection? Surely that might be a better variable than “social ties”.
- pazimzadeh 1y agoif you're not an animal then you don't have to worry about IL-6 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 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66619-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66619-0
- seydor 1y agoI like to remind myself that, in biology, all the arrows are two-way
- api 1y agoWhat I sometimes wonder about these studies is whether we have established causation. Is it that socializing makes people healthier or do healthy people socialize more?
- jvanderbot 1y agoI find it fun that alcohol increases DNA methylation, but we find now that having a rich social life decreases it. If you need any other reason to see the societal fitness of societal lubricants. I've cut way back into "maybe one once in a while" territory, but I also have regular social interactions with exactly two toddlers and one wife and that's about it. 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?
- HPsquared 1y agoI never really do the full belly-laugh thing with friends or family. 90% of the time I'm alone in a room, seeing something funny on a screen.
- anal_reactor 1y agoI wish I had friends, but I also wish I had a Ferrari, the latter one might be reachable within my lifetime if I work hard for it. 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&dam=false&isSearchRequest=true&ms=14600%3B9%3B%3B&od=up&ref=srp&refId=7d5723cf-e0fd-3d76-6dd4-2f6e798e70fe&s=Car&sb=p&searchId=7d5723cf-e0fd-3d76-6dd4-2f6e798e70fe&vc=Car 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.
- RagnarD 1y agoAging is systematic accumulating damage. "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.
- notmyjob 1y agoProbably why women outlive men. Also wars, and hypergamy.
- ashtakeaway 1y ago[dead]
- tsoukase 1y agoThey need to cancel out the whole human civilisation as a confounding factor in order to conclude something useful. Linking genetic and social factors is something I cannot decide to laugh or amaze.
- Etheryte 1y agoI don't really see what you mean? It's well known and widely accepted that environmental factors influence gene expression. Social factors are a very large part of our environment.
- constantcrying 1y agoDo scientists just randomly publish obvious nonsense now? 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.
- crossbody 1y agoExactly right. I doubt we can get to causation unless we conduct proper long term experiment instead of just looking at correlations and assuming causation goes one way. 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.
- m101 1y agoIntroverts probably socialise less because they find it more tiresome or find fewer opportunities they would enjoy. Would they fall under "unhealthy"?
- constantcrying 1y agoSo what? Certainly introverts who are healthy socialize more. And the idea of an introvert as someone who blatantly refuses social interaction is ridiculous.
- AfterHIA 1y agoI often feel like that my inflammatory illness is related to the fact that I lost all my friends in my 20's and came from a dysfunctional family. 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.
- exe34 1y agoLiving life alone makes your life shorter, but it sucks enough that it'll feel a lot longer anyway, so it balances out!
- sejje 1y agoI'm no longer living my life alone, but I greatly cherish the time that I did. I find being alone wonderful.
- AfterHIA 1y ago"Life is very long when you're lonely." -Steven Patrick Morrissey
- wiether 1y agoBeing alone and being lonely are not the same thing.
- exe34 1y agoBINGO! (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.)
- AfterHIA 1y agohttps://vimeo.com/384844632 https://vimeo.com/384844632 If you're going to talk shit don't end your sentence with a conceptual preposition. You're making us all look bad." #AFVP
- grishka 1y agoThere's no such thing as "healthy aging". Aging is deterioration. It's unhealthy by its very nature.
- dag11 1y agoI think the clear implication of the phrase "healthy aging" is a lower-than-average rate of deterioration with respect to increasing years on earth. 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.
- wonderwonder 1y agoThis is my main concern. At 46 i’m in excellent physical condition, do well financially and am incredibly lucky to have the wife and kids that I do. I really want to live for another 200 years. 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
- monocularvision 1y agoDefinitely tougher to make and maintain friend relationships at this age. Most of my group comes from church but think about other social settings or clubs that might provide opportunities to make connections. 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.
- wonderwonder 1y agoAppreciate the advice. Definitely something I need to make happen if its going to happen.
- decafninja 1y agoIn my 30s, church became my only source of friends and acquaintances. However even then, I only made two “true” friends I still meet up with outside of church. Three, if I count my wife who I consider my best friend :) 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.
- adastra22 1y ago“healthy aging” is an oxymoron.
- pengaru 1y agoMy friends are objectively bad for my health vs. how well I take care of myself without their influences. 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
- pedalpete 1y agoI wish these studies would dive deeper into the mechanisms that prompt healthy aging, rather than just saying "social ties". 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.