Study: Social Relationships May Help You Live Longer
Being a social butterfly could help you live longer. A new study by researchers at Cornell University found that social relationships can slow cellular aging. Using data from over two-thousand U.S. adults, researchers measured their “cumulative social advantage,” which is tied to family relationships, emotional support, religious involvement and community engagement. The scores were then matched to biological markers including cellular aging, inflammation and stress hormone function, focusing on epigenetic clocks, which estimate the pace of aging. People with higher social relationship scores had slower biological aging, lower inflammation and no effects on stress hormones.
Taking care of your social life could pay dividends when it comes to your health and lifespan. New findings suggest that there may be longevity benefits related to strong social relationships, especially for people who cultivate them in multiple settings and maintain those connections for years.
Using data from more than 2,100 adults in the long-term Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) project, researchers found that people with more cumulative social advantage — defined as strong social connections among family and friends, as well as in religious and community settings, sustained over one’s lifetime — experienced slower rates of cellular aging and lower chronic inflammation levels.
Lead study author Anthony Ong, PhD, a professor of psychology at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, says that the findings demonstrate a connection between social ties across various spheres of life and tangible biological resilience.
“Specifically, we provide molecular evidence that higher cumulative social advantage is associated with slower biological aging and reduced chronic, low-grade inflammation. This suggests that it’s the clustering and compounding of diverse social resources over the life course that shape the fundamental biological processes of aging,” he says.
