Episode 4: Can relationships keep you feeling young?

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You are listening to the Beyond Age podcast series.

Jennifer Botterill:

Hi, and welcome to Beyond Age Manulife exclusive podcast. Manulife cares about the physical, mental, and financial wellbeing of Canadians. And during this podcast series, we chat with industry experts to uncover the truth about holistic health and aging to keep you living healthier for longer, no matter your age. I'm your host, Jennifer Botterill, and today I'm joined by Kasley Killam, a social scientist and award-winning innovator from Vancouver British Columbia, now based in Los Angeles, California. We'll be discussing whether relationships can keep you feeling young. Welcome, Kasley.

Kasley Killam:

Thank you so much, Jennifer. Great to be here. Very excited for our conversation.

Jennifer Botterill:

Oh, we're so thrilled to engage in this conversation with you. I know that so many people in the world today are busy with lives and careers and figuring out how to manage social time, how we build and maintain our relationships, and I really look forward to our discussion to learning about the potential benefits for our health and certainly in the aging process as well. So, start off, may you please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this field.

Kasley Killam:

Sure, absolutely. So, I have been fascinated by human connection and psychology ever since I was a child. I can remember being a little girl on the playground and watching my peers play and interact and finding it so interesting, even at that age. And so, when I went away to university at Queens University, I studied psychology, and I was absolutely fascinated by learning about mental health and the ways that our wellbeing is influenced by our environments and our interactions. And I started doing research in the space of social connection and being really interested in how our relationships specifically actually affect our health and wellbeing. I started doing research at the University of Pennsylvania in the Positive Psychology Center as well as at Stanford with the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. And those experiences really influenced me. I was so intrigued to find that there were all these researchers who were studying human connection and things like empathy and compassion and kindness with as much vigor as any other scientist.

And so that really set me on this track of exploring the research, but also putting it into practice and sharing it. So, a lot of my career has been focused on writing articles and spreading the information about how we can use these research insights in our real lives, and then also working on ways that we can actually apply it. So, building apps and working across sectors with different partners to build programs and resources so that people can apply these research insights in their everyday lives. So, it's been a long exploration. About five years ago I went to the Harvard School of Public Health and looked at loneliness through the lens of public health and did my master's there focused on that. But currently I run a nonprofit called Social Health Labs where we do a lot of work in this space. And I'm also working on a book which will come out next year. So very excited to share that.

Jennifer Botterill:

Oh, good. So many amazing projects. Well, I attended Harvard University, I took my undergrad in psychology and certainly one of my favorite courses was Positive Psychology. So, I look forward to all your insights, and you are a leading expert in something called social health, and you mentioned your Social Health Labs. To begin, could you tell us what social health is all about?

Kasley Killam:

Absolutely. So, this term is not yet that well known among the general public, and so I'm very excited to share it with more people. Typically, when we talk about our health, we focus on two dimensions. So, we typically focus on our physical health, which is really about our bodies, strengthening our muscles, strengthening our physical resilience. And then we often talk about mental health. Thankfully that's become much more part of the mainstream conversation today. And so, we think about our minds and our emotions and how we can strengthen our emotional resilience, and those are absolutely essential parts of our overall health. But there's this missing ingredient which comes from our relationships, and that's what I like to refer to as our social health. So, health is not only physical and mental, it is also social. There's so much fascinating data showing that when we have powerful and meaningful relationships in our lives, we live longer, and we live healthier and happier during those years.

And so, I believe it's really important to elevate this conversation and help people recognize that relationships are as important as things like exercise and nutrition and that we need to take them seriously. And so, thinking about it as social health is perhaps a helpful way to do that. The other implication of it is that social health looks different for each person. So just like your physical and your mental health might be different for you while you're an athlete. So, you do certain things to take care of your physical health that I don't, I'm sure. And in the same way, we can nurture our social health in different ways. So, at a high level definition of social health, it's the dimension of your wellbeing that comes from connection and community.

Jennifer Botterill:

And in terms of research, I know that multiple studies have suggested that those who are in healthy long-term relationships tend to have lower risks of stress related or cardiovascular related diseases. Could you expand on this?

Kasley Killam:

Yeah, absolutely. It's really interesting. So, there was one study in particular in 2016 that was a systematic review, which is a fancy academic way of saying that the researchers looked at all the different studies that had been done to date and summarized the findings and put them all together. And they concluded that individuals who have poor social relationships have a 29% higher risk of cardiovascular disease and a 32% higher risk of stroke. So, what we can conclude from this finding is that really having those strong social relationships is a protective mechanism. It's a way to prevent and reduce your risk of heart disease down the road. And so, this was a really fascinating study. There's a lot of research that corroborates that and that also has found this link to cardiovascular health. So, this is one of the ways that it's really important that we make sure we're strengthening our social relationships.

Jennifer Botterill:

And so those are a couple of very significant benefits of having positive relationships. And are there other positive impacts that romantic relationships can have on our overall health and wellbeing?

Kasley Killam:

Yeah, that's a great question. Absolutely. People who are in healthy romantic relationships definitely get a lot of benefits out of it, aside from just feeling good and feeling the love, there's research showing that being happily married for example, is linked to better health overall, higher life satisfaction, but also a lower mortality risk. We're seeing in the research that really being in a positive romantic relationship has this benefit in the long-term. And there are a few reasons for this. I think it's kind of interesting to think about why that is. Why is it that feeling connected to someone would actually infiltrate your body and help you be more resilient? One popular kind of leading explanation is this idea of buffering against stress. So, when we experience stress in our day-to-day lives, that takes a toll on our body. It increases our levels of cortisol; it increases our inflammation.

And when that's prolonged over a long period of time, that can have negative effects on our health overall. And so, by feeling supported and feeling that emotional connection, that really buffers against those effects and helps us be resilient in the long run. Another reason for why positive relationships is so helpful, especially with romantic relationships, is just the practical benefits. If you have a partner who's encouraging you to exercise regularly or who is cooking nutritious meals with you at dinnertime, or who, if you have a diagnosis is there to support you with taking your medications or driving you to doctor's appointments, then there's this very practical way in which those relationships will help improve your health over time.

Jennifer Botterill:

And if you think about, I mean many people are surrounded by others in some capacity in their lives, and we can look at many different types of relationships. If we look at non-romantic relationships like family, friends, roommates, coworkers, or the idea of having a supportive community, are there health benefits from having these kinds of relationships as well?

Kasley Killam:

Absolutely. Absolutely. The way I like to think about it is that there are many different sources of social health. There are many different individuals and communities that we can be strengthening our social muscles with. One of them is certainly romantic relationships, but there are many others, like you said, our friends, our family, our coworkers, our neighbours. One distinction I like to make is that social health comes from our individual relationships, so with our friends and family and things like that. But it also comes from a broader sense of community. So, feeling like we belong to something bigger than us. And absolutely there are all different health effects and health benefits that come from these different relationships, whether it's heart disease like we mentioned, but also things like depression. So, adults who report feeling lonely are more than twice as likely to develop depression over time.

Things like high blood pressure and diabetes. I think a really interesting one is dementia. So, among older adults in particular, if they're experiencing isolation or chronic loneliness, that can increase their risk of developing dementia by around 50%. My dad actually has Alzheimer's, so this one hit home. Certainly, this is very important for people as we age to make sure that we're nurturing those social connections as one of the many ways that we're taking care of our health and being preventive. One of the most fascinating findings though is the link with mortality. So, our relationships with friends and family and all these different sources influences how long we live. So, there was one study in particular that looked at the data on over 300,000 participants, and they found a 50% increased likelihood of survival for people who had stronger social relationships. So, this is really important, not just for living well, but also for living longer.

Jennifer Botterill:

And if we look at the last few years, what have you observed to be the biggest challenges impacting our overall social health today?

Kasley Killam:

It's a really great question, and a lot of brilliant minds are trying to figure this out. I wish there was just one answer, but the reality is there are a number of different contributors. One is that we have various kind of cultural trends that are influencing how connected people feel, right? So nowadays it's much more common to live by yourself rather than live with family or friends. That's significantly more common. Now, being alone doesn't necessarily mean that you feel lonely or don't feel connected, but it can increase that risk. Similarly, things like moving around more often, transients, right? I've lived in 12 cities in three different countries at this point. That's definitely taken a toll on my social health at times. But also, things like participation in clubs, so belonging to a community. I mentioned that it's not just about connection with individual relationships, but being socially healthy is also being part of broader communities.

And we see over time that participation in clubs, like book clubs or sports teams, recreationally or churches or things like that, that participation has declined over time. So again, we're seeing these different cultural trends that are influencing our social health. The big one, of course, that everyone wants to talk about is social media and technology. And there's no question that this is playing a role and influencing our social health in complicated ways. It's not all bad and it's not all good either. I think my concern, having read so much of this literature is that a lot of times it's very easy to use social media as a crutch to use it as a supplement for human connection rather than a compliment for human connection. And the data consistently shows that when we use social media in that way, it's not helpful for our social health.

We feel more lonely, we feel more depressed. And yet oftentimes it's easy to do that because the technology is designed to be a little bit addictive. And so that's one of the ones that I'm quite concerned about. I think that we really need to make sure that people developing these different tools are developing them in a way that is nourishing for people's social health. And also, that we as users are being intentional and mindful about how we're engaging online. If we're using it as a tool to plan meetings with people or to meet new people and then connect with them, then it can absolutely be beneficial. And so, it's being intentional and mindful when we're online.

Jennifer Botterill:

Absolutely. And planning our time as effectively as we can to nourish our health and overall wellness. And if we think about some of our listeners who may be feeling disconnected from their own friends or partners or society overall, what steps could you recommend that would be a good place to start to improve their social health?

Kasley Killam:

Great question. The first step is to decide that it's a priority. Decide that your social health is something you care about that it's something that's going to benefit you in the long-term, and then be intentional about it. And you can think about it the same way that you think about exercise. For example, training your physical muscles, right? Going to the gym, going for a run, whatever it is that you like to do to be physically healthy, have that same kind of intention with your social health and think about exercising your social muscles, right? Working it into your routine so that every day you're taking a little bit of time to connect with other people. And one thing I would say is that simple actions can have a really big impact. So just reaching out in small ways can help both you and the other person feel really meaningfully connected.

There was a great study last year that came out in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology where researchers did a number of different experiments to test the impact of outreach. And when people did things as simple as sending a text message to say, hey, I'm thinking about you, they were surprised to find out that the people who received those messages appreciated them way more than they expected. So essentially, we underestimate the power of our outreach. It means so much to other people, and then it has benefits for us as well. Simple things like acts of kindness, saying hello to neighbors, helping people out, expressing gratitude, right? There's a lot of amazing research about the benefits of just saying thank you and expressing to someone what you appreciate about them. So, all of these little actions which may seem simple or trivial, actually can have really profound meaningful effects.

Jennifer Botterill:

Absolutely. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this message,

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Jennifer Botterill:

Welcome back to Beyond Age. Kasley, you mentioned a couple of times about being intentional, and I have one question. Every person is going to be unique; you said that right off the top. So, is there a balance in terms of how much time people should allocate to social time? And some might be more on the side of a little more introverted, or some might be more extroverted and need more social time, or how does every person assess or determine how much social time is the right amount in terms of engagement and meaningful connection? I

Kasley Killam:

Love this question. I am an introvert, so I totally relate to this. What it means is that it is definitely individual preferences. So, for me as an introvert, I don't need as much interaction as an extrovert does. But to me it's really important to have quality connection when I do. So, spending quality time with close friends, with close family, that's really important. And so, what I would recommend for people is to think like a scientist and experiment and play with this and notice what are the interactions that feel really nurturing to me? What are the interactions that feel draining in a given week with a certain social calendar and commitments that I have? How do I end up feeling at the end of that? Do I feel connected, do I not? One thing that's interesting about social health is there isn't a brain scan or one blood test that we can take at the doctor's office to decisively say, this is your social health.

It's very subjective. There are many elements that go into it, and that's what makes it fun. We can play around with it and experiment and notice after I talk to a friend on the phone or after I have dinner with my partner, how do I feel after? Do I feel connected? Do I feel lonely in general? What about my interactions with coworkers and with neighbors? So really being mindful and playing with it and experimenting with it and having fun. I think you'll start to see that we can really feel the tangible benefits in real time.

Jennifer Botterill:

And if we compare that to the description that sometimes people use of quantity versus quality, and based on your experience when it comes to relationships that we have, could you speak to that idea of quantity versus quality? For example, is it better to have a lot of friends and connections that we may not be quite as close to, or is it better to have a few close friends, or is it somewhere in between or is that just always going to be a sliding scale?

Kasley Killam:

Yeah, great question. Well, I would say both quality and quantity matter, but quality matters more, right? So, there's a certain baseline amount of interaction and connection that we all need. As humans, this is a fundamental need that we have. And so, it's really important to make sure that we're getting that kind of minimum amount that feels nourishing to us. That said, it's certainly true that quality relationships, quality interactions, long-term, meaningful connections are more fulfilling for most people. So again, there's going to be some variation here. Like you said, if you're an introvert or if you're an extrovert, the amount of interaction that is meaningful to you will vary. But I think there's some interesting things we can learn from trends over time. So across different cultures in general, people gravitate towards having one or two deep bonds that are really, really close and meaningful, and then a handful of emotionally close relationships.

And then outside of that, about 15 people who are good friends. So that's kind of the quantity that seems to be a general rule of thumb that people gravitate toward. And I think a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is to aim to have around three relationships that are fulfilling and really meaningful to you where you have that deep connection. And then also to be intentional about the quantity as well. So, spending ideally around an hour a day, but honestly, even less time can be fulfilling too. So even 10 minute phone calls have been shown in the research to have meaningful effects on people's levels of loneliness and connection. So being intentional again, but around three close relationships and an hour a day of connection is probably ideal.

Jennifer Botterill:

Yes. Great. And certainly, if I think about my life, I think my social circles have changed and evolved through my life. When I think back to university days or my competitive days as an athlete to my life and my career, now that I'm married and I have children, I mean, you think about even making new friends. Do you have tips about how to make new friends and connections as an adult or as you evolve and age through your life?

Kasley Killam:

It's a wonderful question. Absolutely. Our needs around social health evolve over time. So, when we're younger, we're kind of experimenting with our social lives. We're understanding who am I in a social situation? How do I show up? What are the kinds of friendships that are meaningful to me? And we're really developing those social skills. So, when we're younger, it's actually perhaps more important to have a lot of different interactions and a lot of different relationships so that we can really learn about ourselves and what our social health preferences are. And then over time, like you described, we can sort to narrow down a little bit and think more about what are the relationships that are most important to me? We get busier, we have busy jobs, we have kids. All these things factor in and mean that we have less time to dedicate to socializing.

The one caution I would say is that it's easy to be so busy and caught up in life and caught up in all the pressing needs of day-to-day functioning that we let our other relationships go. It's often the first thing that we let fall to the wayside. When we're busy, we prioritize work. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. We often prioritize work over any of our relationships, and that's where we can look around at a certain point and realize that we are not having those close relationships that we want anymore. So, making sure that we, even if the number of connections that we maintain over time changes, that we are still putting effort into those relationships.

Jennifer Botterill:

And would you say that that change is pretty constant, even if I think about my parents or those that are older than I am, do the types of relationships that they need in their lives, does that continue to change?

Kasley Killam:

It's a good question. I would say that not necessarily the types need to change, but it remains as important as ever. So, I think one thing that a lot of people experience when they retire, for example, or in their older years, is that they lose the common interaction that they're having day to day from work. They're not seeing coworkers constantly. There's just less activity oftentimes, unfortunately. And so, they find themselves in a situation where they're looking around and realizing they're not getting as much connection as they want. So really, I think what starts to matter more as you age is making sure that you have the right quantity of those relationships and interactions and making sure that you're staying engaged through volunteering, through staying in touch with family and friends, creating intergenerational friendships across ages, things like that to make sure that you're still sustaining your social health as we age.

Jennifer Botterill:

And if you talk about those connections and when it comes to social health and aging, what specific effects have you observed social health to be having on our aging process and our longevity?

Kasley Killam:

So, I would say that it's helpful to think about it similarly to physical health. So if we invest in our physical health over the course of our lifetime, if we're making sure we generally eat healthy foods and exercise with some regularity and things like that, get quality sleep at night, that's going to have benefits in the short term, but also in the long term, those are preventive steps that we take so that we can age well later on as well. So, it is with social health as well. This is a muscle that we can constantly be strengthening. So, the way I would think about it is that social health is a resource and an asset that you can be investing in and exercising over time. So, thinking about it as this resource that you can cultivate so that it's there when you need it. And then when we're older, it's going to influence things like our risk for heart disease, like our risk for mortality, and really benefit us in positive ways.

Jennifer Botterill:

And so, I think we've looked at the many benefits of your social health. Now, if some people are listening and think, oh, well, I haven't made this a big enough priority in my life yet, could the possible health and aging effects of poor social health be addressed or even reversed? Or what changes might you feel in your body if you do become more socially healthy?

Kasley Killam:

Yeah, great question. It's never too late.

Jennifer Botterill:

Good. Yes.

Kasley Killam:

At any stage, no matter what situation you find yourself in, you can absolutely become more socially healthy and benefit from the outcomes of that. So, what I would say to someone who might be feeling like they're a little bit isolated or lonely is that you have agency over this and there are steps you can take. And again, those steps don't have to be major. It could be as simple as shooting a text to someone who you haven't spoken with in a while. It could be something like volunteering in your community so that you start to meet new people who live locally and getting involved in something that gives you a sense of purpose and a sense of engagement and regular interaction. So, there are certainly steps each of us can take, and if you're feeling that way, absolutely, have fun with it. Start to play with this. Think about it like a muscle that you're strengthening. You can do that at any age, no matter your situation and get the benefits of it.

Jennifer Botterill:

Absolutely. Well, that's very encouraging to know that as you mentioned, these small steps could be very powerful in the long term and the short term. Now, if we think about any myths or misconceptions surrounding social health, are there any that need to be addressed or clarified from your perspective?

Kasley Killam:

Sure. One I would say is related to sort of the absence of social health. I think there's this myth that loneliness is always bad for you. That's not actually true. So, loneliness is a cue similar to hunger or thirst, right? When our bodies are hungry or thirsty, our brain sends a message to us and says, hello, you need to eat. You need to drink water because that is essential for your survival. You will die if you don't have food and water. And loneliness is actually a similar cue. So, it's telling us that we're missing something that we need. We need to connect because that's as essential for survival, as food and water as well. There was a really interesting study done out of MIT a few years ago where they did brain scans of people who had either been isolated for a day or who had not eaten for a day, and they found that the brain regions that were activated were the same in both of those scenarios.

So truly, our brains recognize isolation in the same way that it recognizes hunger, and we need to listen to that cue. So, loneliness is not always a bad thing. The other thing I would say is that a second myth is that loneliness is sort of an old person's problem, right? There's this idea that once you're older, you are more isolated and more likely to feel lonely. But actually, what we're seeing in the research time and time again is that it's younger generations who are experiencing poor social health and feeling disconnected. And this is sort of a paradox that we really need to think carefully about. As a society, we have more means to connect than ever before, and yet they don't seem to be working. And so, I think being intentional again about social health across the lifespan, and also helping our kids and younger generations learn this from a young age to help set them up for a lifetime of social health.

Jennifer Botterill:

Absolutely. It sounds like that awareness, that education could be extremely important for people at any age. So, if you think sort of at a society level, what do you think we could be doing better to encourage and to promote social health?

Kasley Killam:

Well, on that note, I think education is a key piece of it. Yes, I think that we should be teaching social health skills from a young age in school, and there are some efforts to start doing that. There's some interesting work being done in Calgary to teach social health, and at university campuses here in the US. There are also efforts to give curriculum within school settings to help people exercise their social muscles. And I think those are going to be really important moving forward, but there's a lot more that we need to do at a society level as well. This is what I love thinking about. This has been a lot of the focus of my work. I partner with organizations across sectors and technology and healthcare and education and other fields to think about how we can create programs and services as well as environments that help promote social health.

So, to really develop a socially healthy society, we need to be taking action at all levels, right through the legislation that we pass, but also through the physical environments that we built. A lot of my research at the Harvard School of Public Health was looking at how we can design cities in ways that promote connection and community, and then also thinking about healthcare, right? Increasingly, there's a movement towards social prescribing where doctors ask about connection and loneliness in a doctor's appointment and help match people to resources if they're feeling disconnected. So, all of these different efforts working in tandem are going to be really important. And the final thing I'll say on this is that it also comes down to each of us as individuals, right? What are the cultural norms that we are practicing and passing on to future generations? Do we say hello to neighbors? Do we introduce ourselves when someone new moves into our building or onto our street? Are we treating each other with kindness and patience and practicing empathy and getting to know people from different backgrounds? All of these things matter, and the way that each of us chooses to show up in our interactions each day is determining the society that we live in. So, there's a lot of power in each of us being intentional about practicing social health for our own benefit, but a cultural benefit as well.

Jennifer Botterill:

Great. Great reminders, I think both for individuals. And then I certainly think about my kids too and teaching them at a young age to create a healthy social lifestyle. And thank you for the incredible work that you're doing to create better social health in our society. Hopefully you feel very proud of yourself on a regular basis. And finally, if we could think about, I think we've covered so much ground, but what are one or two takeaways that you would like our listeners to take away from what we discussed today?

Kasley Killam:

Sure. The first takeaway I will leave people with is that connection is as important as exercise and nutrition and sleep. It is a vital practice that we should all make sure that we are prioritizing in our day-to-day lives. Social health is as important as physical and mental health, and increasingly that's being recognized. And I'm so glad because we're all going to benefit by prioritizing our relationships in the same way that we prioritize our bodies and our minds. And the second takeaway I would leave people with echoing what I said earlier, is that you have agency and there's a lot of power from you just taking simple steps to reach out, to connect, to build healthy relationships. It has a huge impact on your own wellbeing, your own health, your own longevity, but also on our culture and society as a whole.

Jennifer Botterill:

Well, Kasley, thank you for sharing all of these valuable insights. Your perspective has been so important for all of us in learning so much about our social health and providing us with tools that we can all now apply. So Kasley, it's been a pleasure, and thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Kasley Killam:

Thank you, Jennifer.

Jennifer Botterill:

So that's it. Thanks for tuning in to Beyond Age, an exclusive podcast from Manulife. Tune into the next episode where we talk to Dr. Beth Abramson from Toronto, Ontario, all about your heart health and how you can beat heart disease. Don't forget to visit our website, manulife.ca/livehealthier for more tips, videos, and content from Manulife that can help you live healthier for longer, no matter your age.

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