Professor Bob Waldinger

So my processor, the third director, said, come to my office and just read through one man's papers.

Read through his file.

And I started flipping through and I started reading about what he had said as a 19-year-old about what he hoped for in his life.

And then I flipped to when he was in his 40s and how he felt about his life and his marriage and his work.

And then I looked at him in his 50s

And I thought, this is the most amazing thing in the world, to be able to read forward somebody's life and then read about what they thought 20 years later and 20 years after that.

So I said, I'm hooked.

I'm going to do this.

Well, the biggest finding is that the people who stayed healthiest and happiest the longest were the people who were most connected to other people.

That people who had good relationships with others, warm relationships, and made that a priority, those were the people

who didn't develop the diseases of aging as soon, if they developed them at all.

They were the people who stayed happier.

And we didn't believe it at first.

You know, we say, yes, we know the mind and the body are connected, but that strong a connection, like adding years to your life, like preventing you from getting type 2 diabetes or heart disease?

Well, we wanted to be sure that other studies were finding the same thing, similar things.

And then we saw that several other research groups were finding exactly the same thing.

It kept you healthier.

Exactly.

I mean, it makes sense that you'd be happier if you had better relationships.

But how could relationships actually get inside our bodies and shape our physiology?