Stanford Neuroscientist: THIS Is The Secret To Living Longer (It's Not Diet Or Exercise)
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What is the most important factor for health and happiness?
The world's longest study, which took place over 80 years and came out of Harvard, found that the single most important thing for our health and happiness is having good relationships. I quote this study all the time. It is a hugely important finding. And I have always wondered... Why? Why does having relationships have such an incredibly powerful impact on not only our brains, but our physical health, our immune systems, our likelihood of having a heart attack, our ability to fight off cancer? This episode finally, finally answered why. Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Ben Ryan, an award-winning neuroscientist and lecturer at Stanford and the author of the phenomenal new book, Why Brains Need Friends.
We are talking about why hanging out with your friends floods your brain with a chemical cocktail that is basically a microdose of MDMA, why being married beats chemotherapy as the number one predictor of surviving cancer, why Botox and Tylenol and Advil are making it harder to make friends, yes, really, and why we should all probably get dogs and get our parents to get dogs if we want them to live a long time. This conversation is so fascinating. You're going to come away with so many tidbits you're going to want to share with people in your life. Like, did you know this? Did you know this? But also just a fully new understanding of your brain and a ton of action steps to not only live longer and be healthier, but also just to feel better every single day.
Welcome to the Liz Moody Podcast, where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing, and we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Ben Ryan, welcome to the podcast. It's such a pleasure to have you.
Why do relationships have a powerful impact on health?
Okay, so the reason that I wanted to have you here today is because I feel like we talk all the time about the health impacts of loneliness. I quote on this podcast far too often the Harvard School of Adult Development study, which is like the number one thing that impacts our health and our happiness in the long term is the strength and quality of our relationships. Like my audience is sick of it. But your book is the first thing that I have ever read that explained why. this is happening? Like what is happening to our brains that is having this impact? So in the simplest words, can you explain why relationships are impacting our brain health and our physical health and our bodies?
I think of it as like a two-sided coin that on one side of the coin, you have connection is really good for you. On the other side of the coin, isolation is really bad for you. Let's start on the positive side of the coin. for me it all comes back to like our evolutionary origins that we are a social species we exist and survive really well in groups we hunt well in groups we have incredible capacities like empathy like you can look in someone's eyes and kind of understand what they're thinking like that's incredible makes us really good at working together so since we survive so well in groups historically, we've been incentivized to stick together. And so our brains have systems that basically make us feel good when we're around each other and, you know, drive things like dopamine that says reinforcement, come back and do this more.
And then on the other side of the coin, we have this kind of alarm system that goes off when we're isolated that says, warning, warning, you're at risk, get back to your group. And so that triggers a stress response that's really unhealthy for you. By being around others, we can kind of like tickle the brain and make it feel good that we're safe.
How do oxytocin and dopamine affect our social interactions?
And then by not being with others, we're initiating this like alarm protocol that actually undermines our health.
And then that neurochemical cascade that's making us feel safe, that's making us want to be around other people is also having these systemic bodily effects. And I didn't understand that until I read your book. Like, for instance, they found in a study that being around other people, having strong relationships had the same impact as chemotherapy on cancer.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the most important factor for health and happiness?
0:00–1:43
2
Why do relationships have a powerful impact on health?
1:43–3:22
3
How do oxytocin and dopamine affect our social interactions?
3:22–55:33
4
How does emotional contagion affect our relationships?
55:33–55:49
5
What is the impact of political beliefs on friendships?
55:49–56:43
6
How do social interactions change in a remote work environment?
56:43–57:45
7
What actionable steps can improve social connections?
57:45–1:49:43
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Liz Moody Podcast
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