Boost Longevity Through Relationships

(person shushing) (mouse clicking) (peaceful music) Headspace Studios. Hi, my name's Andy and welcome to Radio Headspace. Hard to believe we're at the end of the week already and I dunno what you have planned for the weekend, but my hope is, my guess is it's gonna involve some people around you, whether it's family members, whether it's friends, whether it's in person, whether it's via a phone, a computer, an iPad or something. My hope is that there is some kind of human connection. You know, a few weeks back I was chatting to a researcher talking about this idea of Blue Zones. I dunno if you're familiar with Blue Zones. He was sort of the eminent researcher of Blue Zones. In fact, he, I think he may have even come up with the name Blue Zones. But Blue Zones are those regions of the world where, for whatever reason, usually a combination of reasons, people seem to live that much longer than elsewhere in the world. And we got talking about sort of what were the ingredients that led to a long and happy life. And it's really important to stress that this isn't just long life. This is also a life that has a sense of meaning, of purpose. And where there is a greater sense of happiness. And as we sort of talked about it, there were some of the things that you would expect. It was exercise, although not exercises we know , not going out for a run, not going to the gym, and lifting weights. It was more just general movement in day-to-day life, getting up and down from sitting on the floor, walking to the shops. Things that in many countries, many societies we just don't do anymore. Obviously we talked about sleep and ensuring that we're getting enough rest. We talked about nutrition, making sure we're eating the right foods. And again, maybe not what we would expect. No special kind of diet, but just eating a lot of whole foods, not processed, and largely coincidentally in many of those places, sort of a largely vegetarian diet. But anyway, we got to talking about community and friends, the people that surround us in our life. And he came out with a statement that really, really surprised me. He said, yeah, when we look at the data, we could say that having a tight group of friends around you, that's probably gonna add about eight years to your life. And as we think about longevity, as we think about happiness in our lives, I don't think we tend to think of the importance of community. We tend to think about looking after our body, maybe looking after our mind, but we don't really think of the importance of having those people in our life. And these aren't just sort of casual friends that we might go out with once in a while. These are the the handful of friends that you can phone...