In her TED-talk, Susan Pinker presents her research on longevity factors and her theory of, what she calls, « the village effect ». She started her research as she was very intrigued by the factthat women live on average 6 or 8 years longer than men in the developed world.She discovered the Blue Zone which is a spot on the island of Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean, where there are six times as many centenarians as on the mainland which is only 200 miles away. Moreover, thereare as many men as women who are centenarians, so the gap of 6 years does not exist in the Blue Zone. In order to understand this phenomenon she had a close look into the different factors that may have an impact on longevity. According to her findings, only 25% of longevity are explained by genes and 75% by lifestyle. Thus, she investigated the life style of the people living in VillaGrande, the heart of the Blue Zone and compared it to other findings of different authors. What strucked her most was the infrastructure and the social cohesion. Due to a very undulated landscape, houses are tightly spaced and alleys woven so that villagers constantly intersect. Therefore, people living in the area are never really isolated and, according to Pinker, whereas infectious disease was the risk of the industrial revolution, today’s public health risk is social isolation. She points out the fact that, in the developed world, most of us only have two people to lean on when we have a problem. This seems to be one of the main differences compared to the Blue Zone.
She wanted to investigate further and met several centenarians on the island. First she met a very positive man and thought this to be an indication that positive thinking is the key to longevity, but this hypothesis was not confirmed as the second man she interviewed was the grumpiest person she had ever met. She noted that every person she interviewed was always surrounded by extended family, neighbours, the barkeeper, the grocer, etc. and thus never left to live a solitary live. She also noted that people in the Blue Zone do not eat very healthily, but instead eat food containing lots of gluten and fat, which seems to prove that food is not the main factor of longevity contrary to popular opinion.
Pinker presents the findings of Julianne Holt-Lundstadof Brigham Young University, who, in a series of studies on tens of thousandsof middle-aged people, found the following predictors of longevity as being significant (by order of importance, from the less to the most important predictor): hypertension treatment, weight, exercise, cardiac rehabilitation,flu vaccine, quit boozing, quit smoking, close relationships and social integration. These two top predictors corroborate Pinker’s findings on the importance of social cohesion and interaction. What is quite surprising in Holt-Lundstad’s findings is the fact that the interactions do not need to be with people one has strong bonds with, but that also interactions with people one has weak bonds with positively contribute to longevity. What seems to matter is the frequency and the fact that the interactions are in person (versus digital interacting*). Pinker underlines that face-to-face contact releases neurotransmitters that foster trust, reduce stress, kill pain, an dinduce pleasure. She mentions researcher Elisabeth Redcay from the University of Maryland, who found evidence for this hypothesis by comparing brain zones of people interacting live to those of people watching videos. Redcay’s findings partly explain why women live longer than men as women are more likely to prioritize face-to-face relationships. Moreover, she emphasizes that in-person contacts and friendships create a biological force field against disease and decline. In her research she also cites the findings of anthropologist Joan Silk of the University of California, which show that female baboons, who have a core of close female friends, live longer, with less stress, and more surviving offsprings. Their cortisone levels are lower. Pinkeralso points out that the rates of dementia are lowest between people who are socially engaged, that women with breast cancer are four times more likely to survive their disease compared to loners and that men who had a stroke are better protected if they multiply social contacts.
The « magic number » as Pinker calls it, seems to be three: one needs to have at least three stable relationships to increase one’s chance of longevity. According to her, 25% of the population in the industrial world say that they have no one to talk to. Based on all these findings, Pinker strongly recommends building personal interactions into our cities, workplaces, and agendas, in order to increase our chance of longevity. She explains that she calls this « building one’s village » since feeling-good bolsters our immune system via hormones that surge through the blood stream and brain and thus help us live longer. To her, building one’s village is a matter of life and death.
- N.B.: As Pinker points out later in her TED-talk, digital technology is evolving and younger generations are getting used to this kind of contact which might have an impact on the effect of digital interacting. She also says that looking at the camera, the changing of its angle and the quality of images might change the psychological effects.
Vocabulary :
- Centenarian : centenaire
- Woven : tissé, tramé, entrelacé
- Grocer : épicier
- Boozing : boire (de l’alcool, en grandes quantités)
- Force field : champ de force
- Bolster : soutenir
TED. (n.d.). The secret to living longer may beyour social life | Susan Pinker. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptIecdCZ3dg
Pauline Le Floc’h & Flora Gonidou