Dec
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.
Circle of Strength is about strength we derive from the circle of women around us. Honor those in your circle with an inspirational gift from the Circle of Strength Boutique.
I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They too will get old.
