Friendship & Aging

Friendship and Aging is a topic close to my heart because as I age it seems the friends I have cultivated all my life have become more important.  Children grow and move onto their own lives, husbands come and go either through divorce or death, our career’s grow and fade, well life just ebbs and flows.  But for me one constant has been the friendships that I have hold dear, the people that have been around the majority of my life and the new friends that have come in during my career days and marriage.  I find that through the thick and thin of my life, the friends I hold most dear have been there through it all and as life mellows I have found that I couldn’t have made it through without the caring love of friends.  Enjoy this story which was originally published in MORE magazine, May 2007.  I have added the photos of friends.

Girlfriends for 35 years

Maya. She lived on a ranch in Nevada with a wide view of the plains and

plenty of room for guests. People were always passing through, bearing wine

and ingredients for dishes they’d cook and eat together. When her daughter

invited me to stay on the ranch to write a novel, I became part of Maya’s

vibrant social circle. She was 90 then, and the fact that she was keen to

get to know a woman half her age was testimony to her gift for friendship.

My friend Sheila died of cancer Nov 9th, age 55

When she died, I told her daughter that no one had had such a good old age

as Maya. Though she’d been divorced for years and had lost her son, she was

rarely lonely. Her friends helped her keep an amused sparkle in her eyes and

vigor in her step.

Maya made me realize that the secret of successful aging lies in our

friendships — so I’ve been reassessing and reconnecting with people I

consider friends. Who are the perennial flowers in my life, those who bring

color and delight every year? And who are the weeds, who leave me feeling

depleted? At midlife, there’s plenty of time to sow new seeds of friendships

that will bring us joy and — as it turns out — good health.

My soul sister Olga (r)

Cultivating Chemistry

There’s solid scientific research showing that friends actually change the

biochemistry of our brains and the functioning of our immune systems. “Good

friendships put our brains and bodies in an optimal state of function,” says

psychologist Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence. “That state is

associated with positive emotions, like joy, which help strengthen the

immune system and the cardiovascular system.”

Scientists have long observed that people with rich social relationships

Neighborhood Friends

live longer than those who are lonely. The more close friends we have, the

more likely we are to be healthy — suffering lower rates of chronic

diseases, accidents, and psychological impairments.

Friendlessness, by contrast, is a major risk factor for disease and early

death, comparable to high blood pressure, obesity, and other serious health

risks. “Being socially isolated is comparable to the negative effects of

cigarette smoking for your health,” says James Coan, PhD, a psychologist and

neuroscientist at the University of Virginia.

What causes this strong correlation between friendship and health? One

Two long time girlfriends Carrie & Linda

theory is that friends provide stress buffering, which is basically social

and psychological support. “Friends may encourage health-promoting behaviors

like proper sleep and exercise, and nag when you drink too much or smoke,”

explains Eric Loucks, a psychologist and epidemiologist at McGill University

who studies the effects of social isolation on heart disease. Maya had a lot

of friends who served as stress buffers, driving her to the doctor, filling

her freezer with soups, and calling in the twilight hours, when she’d

sometimes feel melancholy.

How Loneliness Harms Us

Scientists are also finding that we’re hardwired to seek out others. Too

much alone time and our bodies send out distress signals. “Humans are

fragile as individuals, so when we’re alone, we are in a state of potential

danger,” says John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social

Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. When you feel lonely, your brain

responds by increasing levels of the hormone cortisol, putting you on alert,

as though an enemy were present.

With long periods of loneliness, the overload of cortisol can harm us,

increasing our chances of getting chronic conditions such as cardiovascular

disease and hypertension, Cacioppo says. It can also destroy neurons that

affect memory and interfere with sleep. So much for going it alone.

We’re so wired to make friends that the absence of companionship registers

in our brains like pain. Naomi Eisenberger, a research psychologist at the

University of California at Los Angeles, has found that when people

experience social exclusion, it activates the same region of the brain as

when we’re physically hurt. “Since humans need others to survive,” she says,

“we’ve adapted this mechanism to feel distressed when we’re separated from

others, so that we’ll seek them out.”

Longtime friend Jan (r)

Midlife Companionship

But at midlife, we’re more careful about who gets close. “There’s a

narrowing and deepening of friendship as we get older,” Coan says. We may

have fewer friends, but they’re the ones who can help us be healthy. When we

know someone for a long time, he says, we begin to mirror their emotional

reactions. If we have many positive interactions with someone, our brain

associates that person with good feelings and reacts accordingly.

That’s why, when I’m feeling blue, I call my friend Cristina. It actually

Great friends always include you

doesn’t matter what she says; the fact that we’ve spent so much time

laughing together cheers me up. When I went through a difficult divorce

several years ago, it was my longtime friends who eased my pain: Mary, who

suggested I fill my calendar with a social event every night, and penned

herself in first; Cecilia, who called every week to suggest a long hike; and

Lauren, who introduced me to a handsome single guy. Now those are good pals.

How Society Thwarts Sickness

Like Maya, I love having people over — and it turns out that this may do me

as much good as the multivitamin I take daily. When Sheldon Cohen, PhD, a

psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, measured volunteers’ levels of

sociability and then exposed them to a cold virus, those with the fewest

close relationships were four times more likely to catch the cold.

Even nodding acquaintances — someone, say, in a yoga class — can

contribute to our health, but close friends are best. When psychologist

Lynne Giles, of Flinders University in Australia, looked at the effects of

social networks on longevity, she found that of 1,477 people age 70 or

older, those who had the most close friends — four or five confidantes –

were 22 percent less likely to die over the next 10 years than those with

fewer friends. Whether or not they had children made no difference in

longevity. “Not everyone has a fantastic relationship with their children,”

Giles notes.

My friend Maya lived so well in her old age because she cultivated her old

My Aunt Fran's 90th b-day party

friends, pruned out the ones she couldn’t bother with, and stimulated her

mind by getting to know new people who told her what they were reading or

talked about their recent travels. Since Maya died, I have appreciated my

relationship with her daughter even more.

It’s wonderful to know that just

by being close friends, we can help keep each other healthy for decades to

come.

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Tags: aging, friendship, girlfriends