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you need is love,” sang the Beatles. When one considers the widely documented
health benefits of being in a happy relationship, they might have been on to
something. In this spotlight, we take a look at the health reasons for
celebrating being with someone.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, many people fortunate
enough to find themselves in relationships will be preparing for a day of
celebration. The health conscious may look at boxes of chocolates and meals in
restaurants warily, but it is worth remembering that outside of these
indulgences, a wealth of health benefits have been identified for people in
relationships.
Many will be aware that sex is a form of exercise,
increasing the heart rate and reaching an average peak at orgasm comparable to
forms of light exercise, such as walking upstairs. It is also fine for people
with heart disease to
have sex, so long as they can still do equivalent activities (such as walking
up two flights of stairs) without experiencing chest pain.
Outside of this, though, several other health benefits
arise from being in a relationship. And being in a loving relationship is not
simply a bed of roses; different types of relationship have their own effects.
We investigate.
Put a little love in your heart
The heart is one of the most conspicuous symbols of love,
and perhaps it is unsurprising that love is associated both literally and
figuratively with one the most important organs in the human body. With
February being American Heart Month, it seems prudent to examine the less
obvious benefits to the heart first.
Research has indicated that being in a satisfying
relationship can lead to improved
survival rates after coronary bypass surgery – an aggressive
treatment for heart disease. The effects of satisfaction were reported to be
just as important to survival as traditional risk factors, such as obesity and
tobacco use.
This finding may have been due to happy relationships
encouraging healthful behavior, such as quitting
smoking and keeping fit.
Less active displays of intimacy than sex can also be
beneficial to cardiovascular health. One study found that couples holding hands
for 10 minutes followed by a 20-second hug had healthier reactions to a public speaking task than
participants who merely rested quietly.
The couples that had brief warm social and physical
contact exhibited lower heart rates, lower blood
pressure and smaller increases in heart rate, with results
comparable for men and women.
“These
findings suggest that affectionate relationships with a supportive partner may
contribute to lower reactivity to stressful life events,” write the authors.
The implication from the study is that affectionate relationships could be
related to better cardiovascular health.
Hypertension can
be dangerous, leading to serious conditions including heart failure, stroke and heart attack.
Research has also found that it can increase the risk of cognitive decline
later in life. However, lowering blood pressure is not the only aspect of being
in a relationship that benefits cognitive functioning.
Always on your mind
Sex has also been found by researchers to improve mental health.
A small study of 46 men and women suggested that like other forms of physical
activity, sex reduces levels of stress.
Researchers
conducted stress tests involving acts such as doing mental arithmetic out loud,
finding that people who had sex coped better with stress than participants that
had no sex at all.
A person’s sense of well-being can also be improved by
sex. A much larger study of 3,000 people aged 57-85 demonstrated that those who
were having sex rated their health much more
favorably than those who were not.
In this study, it was not just sex that led to improved
well-being, but being in a satisfying relationship overall. The researchers
found that participants in close relationships were more likely to report they
were in “excellent” or “very good” health, rather than merely “good” or “poor.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, thinking positively in this
manner could lead to further health benefits, including reductions in the risk
of the following:
- Common cold
- Depression
- Distress
- Overall
mortality.
Dr. Larry J. Young, of Emory University in Atlanta, GA,
told Medical News Today that
the benefits to health and well-being that come from being in a relationship
are best understood from seeing what happens when a relationship is lost,
either by death or splitting up:
“Loss of a loved one (e.g. spouse or romantic partner)
leads to an increase in mortality, immune suppression, cardiovascular disease
and depression.”
Love is not the
same for everyone
It should be pointed out that no one seems to experience
love in precisely the same way as everyone else. We are all drawn to different
kinds of people and expect many different things from a relationship. It should
not be surprising, for this reason, that the health implications of love also
vary.
Recently, MNT reported
on a study investigating the effects of attachment
style on pain relief. Adult attachment style refers to patterns
exhibited by individuals in relationships related to how they seek or avoid
closeness.
Typically, the presence of a partner in a painful
situation would be considered comforting and a relief, yet this was not the
case for every participant in the research.
In a small study of 39 women, “moderately painful” laser
pulses were administered to the participants’ fingers while their romantic
partner was present and then absent. The authors found that the more women were
avoidant of closeness in their relationships, the more pain they experienced
when their partner was present.
The
authors concluded that “partner presence may not have beneficial effects on the
experience of pain when the individual in pain is characterized by higher
attachment avoidance.” The presence of others may disrupt the preferred method
of coping with “the threat value of pain” for such individuals.
For the women reporting high closeness with their partner,
it may be oxytocin –
a hormone sometimes referred to as “the love hormone” – that could be
responsible for their experiencing reduced levels of pain.
Lead author Dr. Charlotte Krahé told MNT they
believed that oxytocin might be part of a neurobiological mechanism involved in
shaping the effects of interacting with close others on the pain experience.
Oxytocin has been associated by researchers with parts of
the brain that are involved in emotional, cognitive and social behaviors. Acts
of intimacy, such as sexual intercourse, holding hands and looking into another
person’s eyes, stimulate the release of oxytocin in men and women. The hormone
is produced in larger amounts in mothers when they are giving birth or nursing.
In an article published in Nature,
Dr. Young suggests that long-term bonding between mates may be regulated by the
same mechanisms as those involved in maternal bonding.
Oxytocin “interacts with the reward and reinforcement
system driven by the neurotransmitter dopamine – the same circuitry that drugs
such as nicotine, cocaine and heroin act on in humans to produce euphoria and addiction,”
he writes.
“I think this is the only reason that we do hug and touch
each other all the time. I think this is the mechanism that keeps oxytocin
levels high in relationships,” says Dr. Rene Hurlemann, a professor of psychiatry
at the University of Bonn in Germany.
Addicted
to love, and then withdrawal
“We have evidence that it is the withdrawal from oxytocin
after social loss that leads to the depressive side effects, at least based on
our studies in monogamous prairie voles,” Dr. Young told MNT.
In a paper published in Psychopharmacology in
2012, Dr. Young and James P. Burkett reviewed research on drug addiction
alongside research on social attachments. “The psychology of human love and
drug addiction share powerful overlaps at virtually every level of the
addictive process, from initial encounters to withdrawal,” the authors
conclude.
Oxytocin was found to play a modulatory role in many
aspects of drug addiction, along with additional roles in the processing of
memories and information involved in social attachment.
The association between oxytocin and addiction was
explored further last year in research conducted by the University of Adelaide
in Australia. The study suggested that poor development of oxytocin during
early childhood could explain why some individuals
succumb to addictive behavior.
Dr. Young and Burkett state that the overlaps in the
psychology of human love and drug addiction suggest that forms of treatment for
one domain may be effective in another. “[For] instance, treatments used to
reduce drug cravings may be effective in treating grief from the loss of a
loved one or a bad breakup,” they write.
These findings suggest that further research into the
neurobiological mechanisms of love could reveal ways in which its positive
healthful effects could be brought to people that find themselves without it.
Not all doom
and gloom for single people
Single people can feel quite downhearted around
Valentine’s Day, being surrounded by people experiencing a joy that, at that
moment in time, eludes them. Reading about these examples of health benefits
for happy and affectionate couples may well contribute toward to this.
It is not all doom and gloom for single people, however.
Research has found that having a good network of friends can have many of the
same positive effects as being in a relationship.
One study of 1,500 people aged over 70 found that
participants who reported having strong friendship groups tended to live longer
than people with fewer friends. The authors suggested that this finding could
be due to friends having a positive influence on lifestyle choices.
Despite
all the health benefits that sex provides, research has also demonstrated that
a life of celibacy can also be one that is long and healthy. A longitudinal
study of 678 nuns aged 75-107 found many participants maintaining an active
lifestyle and demonstrating strong cognitive function well into old age.
So, while there is much to celebrate about being in a
relationship around Valentine’s Day, it is by no means the be-all-end-all,
especially when looking from a health perspective. Good health and long life
can be enjoyed by anyone, no matter what their relationship status is.
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