The Tangled Web of Life - Quareness Series (27th "Lecture").
It seems that for us of the human species, our emotional life impacts on the autonomous nervous system and this in turn appears to have significant effects for our health and welfare. The presence or absence of social contact is one variable that occurs again and again throughout many studies on the mechanisms that effect cardiac health. Loneliness and the feeling of helplessness are seen as crucial factors which have a direct impact on the health of the body and the fewer one's social relationships, the shorter one's life expectancy and the more devastating the impact of infectious diseases. Turns out this factor is statistically a greater risk to human health than obesity or smoking - the studies show that even after taking these two variables into account someone of the same age and economic status with a dearth of social contact is more than twice as likely to die as one who has a network of social relations.
One of the most famous large scale investigations of this phenomenon was carried out over several years during the 1960s in the small "Italian" town of Roseto, Pennsylvania (with a population then of 1,600 odd souls) and involved comparisons with neighbouring towns. The death rate from myocardial infarction turned out to be only half that of the neighbours and indeed of the US in general, despite the local diet not being particulary what we call healthy and their blood cholestorel levels being the same as the others and that they smoked a lot. What stood out, however, was the cohesiveness of Roseto as a community and the high levels of mutual support therein. If it wasn't down to the diet or the smoking, the reason for the relative good health levels seemed to lie in the organisation of social bonds. Many later studies made similar findings with heart rate, blood pressure and blood chemistry all consistently found to be altered by human interactions. In seems that in teams people react biologically in different ways from isolated individuals e.g. producing fewer fatty acids when under pressure.
As research into the links between social relations and health expanded in the 1970s another well known study of 4,775 adults in Alameda County, California produced similar results to the Roseto case. At the same time a further 9 year study involving 2,754 people from Michigan had the same outcome i.e. when all the considered biomedical risk factors had been adjusted for, social relations proved once again to be predictive of health.
Moving on in time a study published in the British Medical Journal in 1999 found that older people (over 65) who like to eat out, play cards, go to movies and take part in other social activities lived an average of 2 to 3 years longer than more reclusive people. Simply mixing with other people seemed to offer as great a benefit as regular exercise. It appears that social and productive pursuits are equivalent to and independent of the merits of exercise.
In a similar study at Harvard in the US, it was found that those who were most engaged in productive pursuits were 23% less likely to die than those least involved in such pursuits. When each activity was examined individually, doing a lot as opposed to not much, extended life in almost every case regardless of the activity. Also people who perceived themselves as socially isolated were found to be 2 to 5 times more at risk for premature death from all causes. And those persons with low interpersonal conflict in their lives appeared to do best.
All this raises the question of what exactly these "good for us" social bonds may be. It's clear for example that people can have regular contact with others without feeling they are having any real or meaningful interaction. While physical presence is not always the same as participation in a social network, the important thing perhaps is simply knowing that someone "is there for you" e.g. available and contactable. And this in turn raises the political dimension of what these study outcomes point to - the links between the human biological body and the "polis" (politico-social community) with the implication that our physical health is related to the way the community is run.
In this context careful consideration is needed of the mechanisms of identification which bind members of a group to each other. The link of the individual to the group tends to be woven into a rich and complicated fabric of relations, a kind of organic interdependency. And this living linkage needs to be regularly and freely chosen, otherwise the biological imperative for an individual to maintain homeostasis either when separated from the group (and thereby being seen as an isolated unit having to regulate him/herself from the inside) or when faced with external stressors (say from an arrangement not freely chosen) will tend to impose quite detrimental levels of distress.
It may not at all be a wise move to undermine our long established and hitherto socially acceptable forms of social interaction. Our modern emphasis on competitive individualism tends to isolate the human being from social communities and rituals and can perhaps give rise to more personalties which are detrimental to society's (and maybe their own) wellbeing. If a child is torn between two incompatible messages (say a mother who denigrates a father's lack of ambition and the father who chooses not to compete in what he sees as a corrupt society) his/her solution may well be to act so as to acquire honour and to typically engage in type A behaviour. In this view the human personality is in part determined by the socio-economic conditions of childhood.
Modern psychosomatic research tends to be supportive of this emphasis on rivalry and its identificatory mechanisms. A relatively recent study from the Harvard Centre for Society and Health of 12,643 subjects found that those who had what they called "a rival" attitude had a higher risk factor for mortality than that given by smoking. Distrust and jealousy were the biggest killer, especially for the male, and the best protective factor was neighbourhood cohesion. It again seems that social problems lead to individual ones even at the level of the body itself.
Where is this all going......you may ask. Well my intention is to once again draw attention to the unhealthy direction of some/many of the new social rules being "imposed" in our socalled "enlightened" modern societies. Recently here in the State most of us are in, a quite reasonable (in my view) proposal was put forward by the Kerry County Council that their native "poor auld fellas" be given a limited exemption to drive carefully to and from their local rural pub with a small volume of "likker" on board. The usual "concerned for public health and safety" mob practically "went ballistic" at the notion (though I'm still waiting to see real evidence of danger from these oldsters' moderate "socialising" and driving). In their friggin' certainty 'bout everything the PC crowd seem to have closed their minds entirely to the possibility that they might sometimes be mistaken.
The whole point of the ability of our elderly rural communities to safely self-regulate their social lives in their own chosen/preferred manner is lost in the distasteful "we know what's good for you" sanctimonious nonsense we're constantly fed. And as for the real evidence relating to our holistic health and safety - such doesn't seem to count at all with the authoritarian mindset.
Rant now over.....for this month.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
February, 2013.
