The effects of friends, family, and other sources of positive relationships
and experiences seem to accumulate over time and result in better
physiologic health in old age, according to a new study in the May/June
issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.
Men and women who had good childhoods and good marriages scored
considerably better on a measure of aging that included a broad
range of biological risk factors for disease and death. Individual
components of the general risk measure, known as allostatic load,
include blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood sugar metabolism,
and hormonal levels. Those components often do not significantly
affect health outcomes, but assessing them cumulatively has been
shown to predict risk for disease and death, says lead author Teresa
E. Seeman, Ph.D.
"Wear and tear across multiple physiological systems is consistent
with evidence that many people, particularly at later ages, suffer
from multiple, co-occurring chronic conditions," she says.
The study included a younger cohort of 106 men and women from the
Wisconsin Longitudinal Study who were most recently interviewed
at age 58 to 59 years, as well as an older cohort of nearly 1,200
participants in the MacArthur Studies of Successful Aging who were
between ages 70 and 79 years.
The researchers found that the general risk measure was generally
higher in the older group of men and women, consistent with the
hypothesis that the measure in part represents the normal wear and
tear of aging.
Men and women who had a lot of supportive friends were much more
likely to have low scores than those with two or fewer close friends.
Women, and to a lesser extent men, also seemed to benefit from good
relationships with their parents and spouses.
"Relationships likely affect a range of biological systems
as cognitive and emotional qualities of social experiences are translated
by the brain to downstream patterns of physiological activity,"
she says.
There was also a limited effect in the opposite direction. Men
and women who reported receiving more demands or criticism from
spouses or children tended to have higher general risk scores, Seeman
and colleagues say.
They note that the scores may have been underestimated because
the sample chosen for the older cohort represented the healthiest
third of people in their age range, possibly diminishing the association
between this measure and social relationships.
"The current findings highlight the fact that social environment
effects on physiology are evident throughout the life course and
may thereby represent a pathway for social environment effects on
health and aging," she says.