Researchers Have Pinpointed the One Type of Exercise That Makes People Live Longer—It’s Not What You May Think - Yahoo! Voices

“Not exercising your social fitness is hazardous to your health,” says Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

According to the psychiatrist, who recently summed up eighty-plus years of data in his book The Good Life(January 2023, Simon & Schuster), the formula for health and happiness hinges on positive relationships.

In 1938, amid the worst economic depression in American history, researchers rounded up 268 Harvard sophomores to better understand how early psychosocial and biological factors influence life outcomes.

When Waldinger first joined the study as a young psychiatrist at Harvard, he had an inkling that conventional measures of success like achievement, status, and awards were mere distractions on the path to real happiness.

Some experts even liken social connection to a vital sign—that measuring people’s loneliness levels hints at general health as accurately as blood pressure or pulse.

Forging new connections at an older age may feel impossible— like running a marathon after years spent jogging 5Ks— but the effort leads to major benefits.