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The importance of connections: Ways to live a longer, healthier life

By Giulia Cambieri—From hsph.harvard.edu

The research described in this article was made possible in part by federal funding awarded to Harvard Chan School scientists in the interest of protecting and promoting health for all. The future of research like this is now in question due to the government’s actions to terminate large numbers of grants and contracts and freeze funding for scientific inquiry and innovation across Harvard University.

Social connection, prosociality, spirituality, optimism, and work—growing evidence suggests these five factors can play an important role in improving the well-being of people and communities.

Jeanne Calment, the French supercentenarian who lived to the age of 122, the longest verified human lifespan on record, credited her extraordinary longevity to several factors including the use of olive oil, a nightly glass of port, frequent laughter, and a resilient attitude. “If you can’t do anything about it, don’t worry about it,” she famously quipped.

While scientists tend to agree on the benefits of olive oil (less so on a daily nightcap), research is increasingly showing that social and psychological factors, such as being connected to others, having an optimistic outlook, and having a positive, resilient mindset, like Calment, also play a critical role in promoting well-being and longevity.

We asked faculty members at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to weigh in on the benefits of being connected and how social ties and other factors can strengthen people’s sense of belonging and lead to better health.

Social connection

Researchers agree that social connection can help people live longer and healthier lives. Being socially disconnected, for example, is associated with higher risk of illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, anxiety, depression, and dementia. Loneliness and social isolation have also been shown to increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29% respectively.

Around the world, social disconnection has become so pervasive that countries like the U.K. and Japan have appointed special ministers tasked with combatting this public health crisis. And in the U.S. last year, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a national social disconnection epidemic, warning that about 50% of adults in the country are struggling with loneliness.

“Loneliness is a gap—between the social connections we have and the ones we want to have —and that gap can be closed by changing how we make sense of loneliness and seek to address it,” said Jeremy Nobel, who teaches a course on loneliness and public health at Harvard Chan School. He thinks the health care system, in particular, can play an essential role by both reducing the stigma that surrounds loneliness and referring patients to community resources that can help them overcome it—an approach called social prescribing that is already in use in the U.K. and is currently being tested by some health care providers in the U.S. “It’s not the same as asking the health system to take care of loneliness, but to be aware of it, to understand it as a serious health risk, and to educate and guide patients to available resources that can help them feel less lonely,” he said.

These resources can include social activities such as walking groups, cooking or sports classes, and volunteering opportunities, and creative ones, from drawing classes to book clubs. Nobel established the non-profit Foundation for Art & Healing, whose most prominent initiative, Project UnLonely, offers programs that use the arts as a public health tool to address social disconnection. “Creativity, imagination, and self-expression can help people feel better connected to themselves, other people, and the bigger human experience,” he said. “The arts rewire our lonely brains, changing how we make sense of the social world around us, seeing opportunity where we once saw threats. That shift in perception helps people realize they can navigate loneliness before it becomes a chronic issue.”

Ultimately, Nobel wants people to change how they think about loneliness. “It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us,” he said. “Loneliness is a biological signal indicating that we need human connection, just like thirst is a signal telling us that we need water. I’ve never met anyone embarrassed about being thirsty, so why are we embarrassed about being lonely?”

Prosociality

People who engage in prosocial behaviors—defined as behaviors intended to help or benefit others, such as sharing, volunteering, or making a charitable donation—tend to enjoy better health themselves, evidence suggests.

For example, the Baltimore Experience Corps Trial, a large study to evaluate the health benefits of volunteering for older adults, found that seniors who spent about 15 hours a week tutoring and mentoring young children in public schools experienced improvements in both their cognitive and physical health, including better memory and increased mobility and strength. Other studies have shown that people who volunteer tend to live longer lives.

“One of the most surprising findings in the literature has been that these acts benefit the giver as much as, if not more than, the receiver,” said Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard Chan School. “I think they also benefit the community as a whole. We saw it during the pandemic when people who were more prosocial were also more likely to wear a mask and get vaccinated, which in turn kept their communities healthy by lowering rates of COVID-19 infections and deaths.” (In 2022, a Lancet Commission identified low levels of prosociality as one of the factors that hindered an effective public health response in many countries around the world.)

Last year, Kubzansky wrote an opinion piece in Nature Human Behavior with Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Elissa Epel at the University of California San Francisco arguing that prosociality is a critical but underappreciated factor affecting population health and calling for more research into its effects. “In public health, we tend to focus on factors that put certain people at risk for disease or injury. But we should also look at the factors that could help people stay healthy,” said Kubzansky. “Prosociality may be one of those assets. If we could figure out a way to foster greater prosociality, I think we would see better community health.”

Spirituality

When Tyler J. VanderWeele set out to investigate the relationship between religious practice and health, he expected to find a positive association. After all, faith had always been a vital part of his life. It had helped him in many profound ways, he said, including by providing a supportive community and giving both hope and meaning to his life. His instinct was right, but the significance of the findings took him by surprise. “The effects, on important health outcomes, were substantial,” said VanderWeele, John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and director of the Human Flourishing Program.

One study he led found that adults who attended religious services more than once per week were 30% less likely to die in the following 16 years than adults who never attended. Another showed that people who went to religious services at least once a week were much less likely to die from so-called deaths of despair, such as deaths related to suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning. And another found that participating in spiritual practices during childhood and adolescence may have several positive health outcomes in early adulthood, including lower rates of depression, smoking, drug use, and sexually transmitted infections.

While these studies, which relied from data from the Nurses’ Health Studies, included predominantly Christian participants, VanderWeele said similar effects on mortality risk have been found in other rigorous surveys conducted among Jewish populations in Israel and Taoist populations in Taiwan.

They also seem to be consonant with the first wave of data collected as part of the Global Flourishing Study, an ambitious research project launched in 2021 by VanderWeele and colleagues at Harvard and Baylor University, in partnership with Gallup and the Center for Open Science. The study follows more than 200,000 participants in 22 countries around the world, looking at different factors that may influence their flourishing, such as happiness, spirituality, financial well-being, and social connectedness. Preliminary results seem to suggest that, across the religious traditions examined, people who participate in spiritual practices go on to report better health.

For VanderWeele, this has important implications for both clinical care and public health practice. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask health care providers and public health authorities to encourage people who already hold spiritual beliefs to participate in their religious community. And to promote other forms of community participation for people who are not religious,” he said. “The public health community needs to pay more attention to these factors. If we don’t, we’re blind to the forces that are shaping population health.”

Optimism

Optimism is good for your health, said Kubzansky. She defines optimism as the disposition or tendency to have expectations that the future will be good.

“The findings are remarkably consistent,” she said. “Across different racial and ethnic populations, we have seen that people who are more optimistic are more likely to age in good health and less likely to suffer from chronic diseases, physical illness, or cognitive impairments in old age. Optimists are also more likely to live exceptionally longer lives, beyond age 85 or more.”

Earlier this year, researchers found that postmenopausal women who reported higher levels of optimism showed healthier functioning on two indicators that can predict someone’s ability to maintain physical health and independence as they age—number of times they were able to stand up from a chair without using their hands during 15-second trials, and grip strength. And a 2020 study of U.S. Army active-duty soldiers found that those who were more optimistic had a 22% lower risk of developing hypertension in the following three and a half years.

The biological mechanisms underlying these associations are still not clearly understood. For example, studies looking at the relationship between optimism and biomarkers linked with reduced cellular aging have proved inconclusive. “Optimists tend to consume healthier diets, smoke less, and be more physically active. But behaviors alone don’t explain all the differences we see,” said Kubzansky, who is currently investigating whether a healthier gut microbiome could be associated with higher levels of optimism.

Whatever the pathways might be, finding ways to increase optimism at the population level, such as strengthening the welfare system to better support people overcoming challenges, may help improve public health. “It’s important that people feel a sense of hope when they think about the future. When they don’t, they stop believing that it’s worth trying to make changes to improve their health or other things,” said Kubzansky.

While there are ways to help people feel more optimistic, such as cognitive behavioral therapy and writing exercises, Kubzansky said it’s not a small order to change someone’s mindset and the way they view the world. “Many people face barriers and constraints that genuinely make it harder to feel optimistic,” she said. “We need to recognize the social context in which people live and create the conditions that make it more likely that they feel like they can manage those constraints and look at the future with more optimism.”

A healthy workplace

Work is one of the most important—and neglected—social determinants of health, according to Lisa Berkman, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and of Epidemiology at Harvard Chan School and director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. “Work drives income, social ties, and the opportunity for meaningful participation in society,” she said. “As such, it also shapes both our cognitive and physical health in many different ways.”

Different aspects of the workplace can influence the way workers age, but according to Berkman, the most important ones are whether employees have control over their schedule, deal with reasonable job demands, and enjoy positive social relations at work, meaning they feel supported by both their colleagues and supervisors. Berkman’s own research in both Europe and the U.S. found that workers who have little control over their workload tend to suffer from higher mortality rates, especially when they also have more challenging family needs, such as in the case of single parents. Furthermore, women who live in countries where public policies ensure several months of fully paid maternity leave were 16% less likely to suffer from late-life depression than women without paid maternity leave, according to a 2015 study co-authored by Berkman. “Work and labor policy can have a protective effect on people’s health. Or they can accelerate the aging process,” said Berkman.

The good news is the factors that affect health can be modified through corporate interventions or labor policy. In fact, a study Berkman recently conducted found that workplaces that adopted policies to increase flexibility and improve work-life balance saw their employees’ risk of cardiovascular disease significantly decrease, especially among older workers, with no changes in their productivity. (Berkman and colleagues at Harvard Chan School and the MIT Sloan School of Management have developed a toolkit to help employers promote the health and well-being of their workforce.)

Governments too can enact policies to help workers age in good health, for example by adopting paid family leave or making sure employees have a number of guaranteed hours to work and making work conditions less precarious. Most importantly, said Berkman: “It needs to be a public health approach.”

About The Author

Giulia Cambieri—Senior Writer in the Office of Communications

Last Updated: June 4, 2025

Featured in this article

Lisa Berkman—Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and of Epidemiology

Laura D. Kubzansky—Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Tyler J. VanderWeele—John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology

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An 81-year-old brain doctor’s 7 ‘hard rules’ for keeping your memory ‘sharp as a whip’

From https://www.cnbc.com

Published Thu, Feb 2 2023 10:41 AM EST Updated Thu, Feb 2 2023 5:22 PM EST

Richard Restak, Contributor

Like any other part of your body, your brain needs daily exercise. Neglecting your brain health can make you vulnerable to degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

As a neuroscientist, I’ve spent decades guiding patients with memory problems through brain-enhancing habits and exercises — many of which I practice, too.

Here are seven hard rules I follow to keep my brain and memory sharp as a whip at 81 years old:

1. Choose fiction when you can.

You can learn a lot from non-fiction works, but they are often organized in ways that allow you to skip around based on personal interests and previous familiarity with the subject.

Fiction, on the other hand, requires you to exercise your memory, as you proceed from beginning to end and retain a variety of details, characters and plots.

Incidentally, I’ve noticed over my years as a neuropsychiatrist that people with early dementia, as one of the first signs of the encroaching illness, often stop reading novels.

2. Never leave an art museum without testing your memory.

My favorite painting to do visualization exercises with is Edward Hopper’s “Western Motel,” which depicts a woman sitting in a sunlit motel bedroom.

Start by intently studying the details until you can see them in your mind’s eye. Then describe the painting while looking away from it.

Did you include the tiny clock on the bedside table? The gooseneck lamp? The piece of clothing on the chair at the lower right of the painting? Can you recall the colors and the composition of the room?

You can do this with any piece of art to boost your memory.

3. Keep naps under 90 minutes.

Naps lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half, between 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., have been shown to increase later recall for information encoded prior to the nap.

Several studies have also found that naps can compensate for poor sleep at night. If you struggle with insomnia, a mid-afternoon nap can boost memory performance.

Over the years, I’ve trained myself to nap for exactly half an hour. Some people I know have learned to nap for only 15 minutes, and then wake up refreshed and reinvigorated.

4. No party is complete without brain games.

My favorite activity is “20 Questions,” where one person (the questioner) leaves the room and the remaining players select a person, place or thing. The questioner can ask up to 20 questions to guess what the group decided.

Success depends on the questioner’s ability to keep clearly in mind all of the answers and mentally eliminating possible choices on the basis of the answers.

Bridge and chess are also great for exercising your memory: In order to do well, you have to evaluate previous games, while also considering the future consequences of your decisions in the past and present.

5. Eat brain foods.

Dr. Uma Naidoo, a nutritional psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, has a great acronym for a BRAIN FOODS:

B: Berries and beans
R: Rainbow colors of fruits and vegetables
A: Antioxidants
I: Include lean proteins and plant-based proteins
N: Nuts
F: Fiber-rich foods and fermented foods
O: Oils
O: Omega-rich foods
D: Dairy
S: Spices

And good news for chocoholics (like me): A 2020 study found that cocoa flavonoids, the ingredients in dark chocolate, can enhance episodic memory in healthy young adults.

6. Use images for hard-to-remember things.

My wife’s dog, Leah, is a Schipperke (pronounced “SKIP-er-kee”). It is a distinctive name, but I’d have the hardest time remembering it. So to finally be able to answer “What kind of breed is that?” at the dog park, I formed the image of a small sailboat (small dog) with a burly skipper holding a huge key.

Get in the habit of converting anything which you find hard to remember into a wild, bizarre or otherwise attention grabbing image.

7. Don’t sit on the couch all day.

One recent study of 82,872 volunteers found that participants 80 years or older who engaged in moderate to high level of physical activity were at lower risk for dementia, compared with inactive adults aged 50 to 69 years.

Even just a shift from sedentary non-activity (prolonged sitting, a “never walk when you can drive” attitude), to active movement (standing, climbing stairs, walking a mile daily) made a difference.

Housework has also been linked to higher attention and memory scores and better sensory and motor function in older adults.

Dr. Richard Restak, MD, is a neuroscientist and author of 20 books on the human brain, including “The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind” and “Think Smart: A Neuroscientist’s Prescription for Improving Your Brain’s Performance.” Currently, he is the Clinical Professor of Neurology at George Washington Hospital University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. In 1992, Dr. Restak was a recipient of The Chicago Neurosurgical Center’s “Decade Of The Brain Award.”

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Monthly Motivation

“The groundwork of all happiness is health.” — Leigh Hunt

Mental Health Awareness – a good reminder that your brain needs check-ins too, not just your blood pressure. The research is clear: staying socially connected, sleeping well, and keeping your mind active are some of the most powerful things you can do as you age. That means calling a friend, doing a crossword, or even just stepping outside counts as self-care. No gym required.

Your Medicare benefits may help more than you realize. Depression screenings are covered at no cost. You may also have access to telehealth counseling – a therapist, from your couch. And your Annual Wellness Visit includes a cognitive screening, which is worth doing sooner rather than later.

Oh – and also Dental Care – Oral health plays a key part in maintaining your mental health and self esteem, so if you’ve been putting off that cleaning, this is your nudge. Call me if you’re not sure what dental coverage your plan includes!

𝑪𝒚𝒏𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒂 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒔—𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒊𝒔 𝑰𝒏𝒔𝒖𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝑨𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒚—(𝟵𝟯𝟳) 𝟯𝟴𝟳-𝟲𝟲𝟳𝟮

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Exercise is an all-natural treatment to fight depression

February 2, 2021 From Harvard Health Publishing

Exercise is as effective as antidepressants in some cases.

One in 10 adults in the United States struggles with depression, and antidepressant medications are a common way to treat the condition. However, pills aren’t the only solution. Research shows that exercise is also an effective treatment. “For some people it works as well as antidepressants, although exercise alone isn’t enough for someone with severe depression,” says Dr. Michael Craig Miller, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

The exercise effect

Exercising starts a biological cascade of events that results in many health benefits, such as protecting against heart disease and diabetes, improving sleep, and lowering blood pressure. High-intensity exercise releases the body’s feel-good chemicals called endorphins, resulting in the “runner’s high” that joggers report. But for most of us, the real value is in low-intensity exercise sustained over time. That kind of activity spurs the release of proteins called neurotrophic or growth factors, which cause nerve cells to grow and make new connections. The improvement in brain function makes you feel better. “In people who are depressed, neuroscientists have noticed that the hippocampus in the brain—the region that helps regulate mood—is smaller. Exercise supports nerve cell growth in the hippocampus, improving nerve cell connections, which helps relieve depression,” explains Dr. Miller.

The challenge of getting started

Depression manifests physically by causing disturbed sleep, reduced energy, appetite changes, body aches, and increased pain perception, all of which can result in less motivation to exercise. It’s a hard cycle to break, but Dr. Miller says getting up and moving just a little bit will help. “Start with five minutes a day of walking or any activity you enjoy. Soon, five minutes of activity will become 10, and 10 will become 15.”

What you can do

It’s unclear how long you need to exercise, or how intensely, before nerve cell improvement begins alleviating depression symptoms. You should begin to feel better a few weeks after you begin exercising. But this is a long-term treatment, not a onetime fix. “Pick something you can sustain over time,” advises Dr. Miller. “The key is to make it something you like and something that you’ll want to keep doing.”

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Fall Prevention: Balance and Strength Exercises for Older Adults

From John Hopkins Medicine; Reviewed by Lora Stutzman, PT

Falls can have very serious consequences as we age. Each year, more than 25 percent of adults 65 or older have a fall, and 3 million are treated in emergency departments for fall injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fall Risks

The risk of falling in older adults is usually related to combination of factors, including:

Balance and/or walking problems. Balance can be affected by vision changes, vestibular problems and altered sensation in the feet.
The use of multiple medications. Studies indicate that when individuals take five or more medicines, the risk of falls increases.
Home hazards (including dim lighting and trip hazards)
Positional low blood pressure (such as orthostatic hypotension, when blood pressure drops upon standing.
Feet and footwear issues

Falls often occur in the bathroom when sitting or standing from the toilet or shower, or at night in a dark bedroom when getting up quickly and tripping on the way to the bathroom.

Exercises to Prevent Falls

While it’s not possible to completely prevent a fall, exercises that focus on balance and strength training can reduce the risk of falling. “We treat elderly adults for injuries sustained from falls, and other patients who feel unsteady while walking or standing and are fearful of falling,” says Lora Stutzman, a physical therapist with the Johns Hopkins Rehabilitation Network. “These exercises can help improve balance and build strength to help prevent future falls.”

For older adults, activities such as squatting, standing up from a chair and walking may be difficult or cause them to feel unsteady, which increases their risk of falling. The following exercises are intended for those who have a low risk of fall and are able to stand on their own without support from others. Always talk to your doctor or physical therapist first before starting new exercises, especially if you have weak balance.

Stutzman demonstrates two exercises below.

Sit-to-Stand Exercise

The sit-to-stand exercise builds leg strength and improves body mechanics and balance, which are all important in reducing falls.

1. Start by sitting on a sturdy chair of standard height, and make sure that it won’t slide or roll. You should be able to sit comfortably with your feet flat on the ground. Have a sturdy support surface in front of you, such as a countertop, so that you can reach to it for support if you start to feel unsteady when standing. Scoot forward so your buttocks is positioned at the front of the seat.

2. Lean your chest forward over your toes, shifting your body weight forward. Squeeze your gluteal muscles and slowly rise to a stable standing position.

3. Slowly sit back down to the starting position and repeat 10 times.

4. If necessary, place your hands on the arms or seat of the chair and push through your hands to help stand and sit. The goal is to not use your hands at all.

Perform 10 repetitions, twice a day. For an advanced version, hold hand weights to add resistance.

If you have pain in your knees, back or hips, discontinue and talk to your doctor or physical therapist.

Balance Exercise

This series of exercises helps if your balance is unsteady. Make sure you have someone with you in case you lose balance.

To begin, stand in a corner or have a kitchen counter in front of you to reach out to in case you start losing balance.

1. Feet apart: Stand with feet about shoulder-width apart, eyes open, and hold steady for 10 seconds, working your way up to 30 seconds.

If you find yourself swaying or reaching for the wall or counter frequently, just keep working on this exercise until you can do it with minimal swaying or support. Once you can hold this position firmly for 30 seconds, move on to the next exercise.

2. Feet together: Stand with feet together, eyes open, and hold steady 10 seconds, working your way up to 30 seconds.

Once you can do this exercise for 30 seconds with minimal swaying or support, move on to the next one.

3. One foot: Stand on one foot, eyes open, and hold steady 10 seconds, working up to 30 seconds. Switch to the other foot.

4. Eyes closed: If you can perform the first three exercises safely and with little support, try to do each one with your eyes closed. Hold for 10 seconds, working up to 30 seconds.

The goal for each exercise is to hold the position for 10 seconds and progress to 30 seconds, five repetitions (including five per leg on the one-foot exercise), two times a day.

Additional Steps to Prevent Falls

Remember, it’s important to talk to your doctor or physical therapist about fall prevention.

Discuss medications and changes in your exercise routine.
Tell your doctor if you fall.
Ask a friend or family member to help check your home for trip hazards.

“Keep in mind,” adds Stutzman, “it is always best to have company at home with you while exercising for safety and supervision and in case you need help.”

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