This obsession can lead to isolation, stress and anxiety – symptoms of what is known as “longevity fixation syndrome”.
“The most important thing for leading a long, healthy and fulfilling life turns out to be your interaction with other people,” Emanuel says.
“Being the guy who’s going to the gym at 5am and working out [by] yourself, that’s not a good idea. Turns out that having rich social relationships is really more important for your longevity, more important for living healthfully than the exercise or the food and all that stuff.”
In Emanuel’s recent book Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life, social relationships are listed as one of several pillars to healthy living, alongside eating well, getting enough sleep and exercising.
“That’s primary in my book, because the data are that it’s the most important thing you can do to live a long, healthy and fulfilling life.”
Body scans and genetic testing are less important to living a long and healthy life than we might think, he says.
“Living to 150 itself is not the point.
“What’s the point of a life that long? You have to ask yourself, ‘What is the point of longevity?’”
To Emanuel, the goal should be a meaningful and fulfilling life, rather than a record-breaking number of years.
“I think, for most people, a good life means that they’ve made a contribution to the people around them, to their community, to the larger country they live in and to the world.
“And I think getting outside yourself is actually critical to leading a full life.”
He believes social relationships with friends, family and acquaintances are the key to protecting your brain health as you age.
“I have a very clear notion of hell, which is my body’s working fine, my heart’s pumping, my lungs are doing well, my kidneys are still functioning well, liver’s functioning, but my brain isn’t, and I’ve got dementia.”
Emanuel notes there are certain things you can do to reduce your risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s, including getting the shingles vaccine and a high-dose flu vaccine.
Social interaction can also benefit brain health.
“It activates the reward system in the body, activates oxytocin, the so-called love hormone in the brain. It also activates dopamine.
“It tamps down the pituitary adrenal axis [the system that regulates stress, digestion and immunity] and the stress hormone cortisol.”
That’s why interacting with others isn’t just psychologically good for us, but biologically beneficial.
“Being socially isolated and having loneliness are associated with a number of genes … [that] turn out to be quite negative, very pro-inflammatory, very bad from a cardiovascular standpoint.”
Socialising can help keep those loneliness genes inactive.
“In addition, we know from how we feel when we interact with people that human interaction is actually very fulfilling.”
The neocortex, the front part of the brain, allows us to collaborate and communicate, and makes us happy when we interact with others, he says.
“Unfortunately, our societies are going in the wrong direction. We’re having fewer friends, fewer close friends who we spend a lot of time with. We’re eating more meals alone.”
So, how do you go about forming close friendships and relationships, particularly as you age? Emanuel says virtual friendships won’t cut it.
“It’s almost impossible to form a new friendship over the phone.”
He suggests that existing relationships are easier to keep up virtually.
He advises making “weak connections”: seeking out situations in which to meet people in person and strike up conversations.
“The classic is the water cooler at work. In the modern era, it’s the barista, it’s your Uber driver, it’s someone you happen to sit next to on an airplane or you get in some group with them.
“You can join clubs – there are mountaineering clubs, there are running clubs, there are biking clubs, there are book clubs. There’s all sorts of ways you can actually connect with other people, and then some of them might become, over time, close friends. Some of them may remain casual friends.”
It’s important to maintain existing friendships too. For Emanuel, the ultimate “wellness trifecta” is simply inviting friends over for a meal.
Not only do you get the physical health benefits of a home-cooked meal, you get the brain health benefits of socialising.
“I like to cook, I like to have people over to have good conversation and have dinner parties.
“I like to call those ‘wellness trifectas’, because not only do I get good food, I also get good social interaction with people and good brain stimulation. And so you’re hitting more than one wellness behaviour by one activity.”
Other ways to do this could be going for a walk and coffee with friends, or planning a family holiday with outdoor activities.
“Think about ways you can get a lot of wellness benefit from one activity.”
Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who has been with the NZ Herald since 2019. She specialises in all things health and wellbeing and is passionate about telling Kiwis’ real-life stories.
