Connect for Better Health

In recent years, medicine has taken note of how loneliness and social isolation can damage our health. Look no further than the 2023 Surgeon General Advisory about it.¹ But what’s less discussed, is the fact that the opposite is also true.

Researchers have found that socialization actually has the power to proactively improve our health and wellbeing. That increased connection can prevent disease, improve immune function, and even extend lifespans.

At True Health, this is the kind of lifestyle medicine our practice is focused on. So this month, we’re catching you up on the latest discoveries, and how you can use them to optimize your wellbeing every day. 

Supported by Decades of Research

Research into the health impacts of social connection first took off way back in 1979. Almost 50 years ago, a landmark study showed that people with strong social ties were three times less likely to die than those without. This was true regardless of how healthy they were—in fact, social people lived longer even if they had risk factors like smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity.²

In the years since, repeated research has built on the same result, like a 1985 study that found that social support promoted health, but also led to better health outcomes during stressful life events.³ And today, scientists are working on uncovering the hormonal and chemical processes that drive these results.

But even after decades of research, it’s been proven that mainstream doctors are still underestimating the importance of social connection for health.

A Blind Spot for Typical Healthcare

A study published of 681 healthcare providers by BYU researchers found that in spite of mounting evidence of the importance of connection, providers still rank social connection low in importance for health. Not only that, they also listed a variety of barriers to addressing the social aspects of health in their treatment.

This blind spot is one of the reasons that we created True Health: to offer high quality medical care that treats lifestyle factors that affect so many modern health problems today. In the final paragraph in this article, we’ll talk about how we’re helping to address it, but let’s talk about the stakes of ignoring social connection first.

The Risks of Reduced Connection

Over the decades of research into the topic, scientists have discovered a whole host of physical health conditions that are worsened with poor social connection.

Research has found that loneliness can increase risk of coronary heart disease and stroke by about 30%.⁴ It’s connected to elevated blood pressure in middle aged and older individuals, with the impact becoming stronger with age and the amount of loneliness.

Social isolation has also been connected to a 28% increased risk of dementia⁵, and a 31% increase in diabetes risk even when adjusted for “age, survey, parental history of diabetes, smoking status, alcohol intake, physical activity, hypertension, dyslipidaemia, BMI, education, sleep complaints and depressed mood”.⁶ Fortunately, that’s not the whole story. 

Connecting for Greater Health

The good news is, the risks associated with lacking social connection can be turned around by patients in their everyday life. Especially with the support we offer at True Health. 

Just like reduced social connection has been linked to illness, improved social connection has been tied to reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, dementia, improved immune function, and reduced mortality from all causes. 

When patients increase their social connection, they don’t just reduce risks, they optimize their health. Multiple studies have found that increased connection can increase immunity in a variety of ways: in one study, those in a lab with better social connection were less likely to catch a virus. In another, the more diverse a subject’s social network, the less likely they were to be susceptible to a cold.⁷

There even seems to be a connection between social connectedness and BMI and diabetes. One study looked at adolescents in school and found that the more socially connected they were, the lower their BMIs.⁸ When it came to diabetes, another study showed that weekly calls with a peer mentor led to a greater decrease in blood glucose than education and nutrition help alone. And as research continues, we fully expect to unlock more benefits and techniques to tap into them.

How True Health Can Help

One of the things that makes True Health so unique is our ability to offer care beyond the typical medical system: multi-dimensional support for every aspect of your health. We know and understand the importance of social connection as part of your physical (and mental) health, and actively integrate it into your care.

Better yet, we don’t just tell you connection is important, we help you find ways to tap into it. Every True Health patient has a psychologist and health coach available on their care team to help remove barriers and put habits into practice that can increase social connection.

Joining True Health itself is an act of social connection, because we are building a community of health where everyone is on the same journey. We bring people together with community walks and member events, and offer social support through mental health care.

When you become part of our community, you’re never alone again in the journey to optimize your health and live a healthier lifestyle.

To learn more about how to join us, click the link below.

https://truehealth.co/patient-intake/

1. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-social-connection-advisory.pdf ↩︎
2. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6125010/#bibr12-1559827615608788 ↩︎
3.  https://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Mail/xmcamail.2012_11.dir/pdfYukILvXsL0.pdf ↩︎
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5831910/#:~:text=Recent%20Advances:%20Population%2Dbased%20studies,social%20isolation%20requires%20additional%20studies. ↩︎
5. https://agsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jgs.18140 ↩︎
6.  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dme.12951 ↩︎
7. https://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2017/02/do-social-ties-affect-our-health?utm_source=chatgpt.com ↩︎
8. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4248560/ ↩︎