The third post in a four-part series on longevity.
Week 3: Emotional Health and Longevity
Did you know that by age 60, you lose 3% of your muscle mass per year? Scary, huh? And they tell us we’re not supposed to get emotional about aging! The good news is that you can protect yourself by… you guessed it! Strength training!
In the last few weeks we’ve covered lifespan vs. healthspan, the important of nutrition in staving off muscle loss, and of course the importance of exercise, and especially strength training.
This week we’ll switch gears a little and starting looking at our inner lives and how that experience affects our longevity and healthspans. In last week’s post we touched on the cultural practices of certain peoples that seems to promote longevity. Oftentimes we’re tempted to point to the famous Mediterranean diet and say, well, I’d live to a hundred if I ate like that! But the other interesting aspect of these cultures that seem to produce centenarians is that they often have tight-knit communities as well.
So, what is emotional health, anyway? The simple fact is that mental health has, perhaps begrudgingly, made its way to our modern healthcare system. But mental health is more about specific medical diagnoses such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Emotional health, on the other hand, is really about our ability to cope with our emotions, whether positive or negative, and our ability to handle certain life stressors like setbacks, illness, and loss.
We’re all well-acquainted with the way modern medicine often fails those with mental health issues. Mental health can be quite challenging to treat, and the medications we’ve developed often just blunt the worst of it. Now, imagine how well modern medicine handles emotional health? If day-to-day anxiety, minor depression, or grief doesn’t meet a “clinical threshold” it simply gets ignored. Or, worse, if you’re working through grief, the standard response from our healthcare system is to offer you anti-depressants! It’s like the old saying: to a hammer, everything looks like a nail! The system just isn’t designed to help us process our normal, but sometimes challenging, emotions.
Remember that old song by Shel Silverstein? “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout would not take the garbage out.” The truth is, we all need to take our emotional garbage out! If we don’t, we may find that a lot of garbage has piled up, just like it did for Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout, and by then it’s a lot more difficult to manage than if we just develop a regular habit of managing our emotional garbage.
As you may recall, I’ve been reading Outlive by Peter Attia. He’s not exactly an emotional health expert, but his interest in longevity has led him to the realization that lifespan is great, but if you’re miserable, is it really the point? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to focus on healthspan – a fulfilling, healthy life – rather than just length?
Dr. Attia’s recommendation is to start thinking about emotional health much like we should think about physical health. If something isn’t working, we get it checked out, right? But if we’re not coping well, do we do the same? Truthfully, it’s almost to be expected that we’re less likely to get our emotional health checkup because we’ve been told that all we need to do is “turn that frown upside down,” or “buck up, soldier.” Sometimes “faking it until you’re making it” does work, but often it does pay dividends to take a closer look.
Socrates, the famous ancient Greek philosopher, supposedly said, “know thyself.” It’s apparently a little older than that, having been inscribed on a temple in Delphi before his time. And, while it seems simplistic, it contains powerful wisdom within its simplistic veneer.
You know how you might get lab work when you’re feeling ill, or get an x-ray if you’re worried you’ve broken something? But how on earth would you get an emotional checkup? Hey, guys, the good news is, you don’t have to go to therapy, because apparently there’s nothing ya’ll would rather not do.
It can be as simple as asking yourself a few questions. What sorts of things do you say to yourself when you’re alone? What phrases, or mantras, do you find yourself repeating in your mind? Ever hear the expression “she was her own worst critic?” Maybe take the time to do a little self-analysis. What sorts of things are you telling yourself about who you are? What you’re capable of? Does your inner voice ever get a little oppressive? Maybe it’s filled with regret, or even shame?
The good news is that we’re capable of rewiring our feedback loops and interjecting with some positive self-talk. How about catching those negative thoughts before they land on the same old ground, and turning them around? We don’t have to devolve into narcissists, but should we allow our internal negativity to make us miserable?
One of the most powerful things you can do once you realize that you’re the one telling yourself who you are, is to start telling yourself a different story. Start small. Make a goal. Make it happen. Then tell yourself you’re someone who can get things done. Most of us are capable of far more than we let on to ourselves. Maybe there’s a lesson in that? What are we afraid of? And maybe it’s time to start facing that?
Harvard professor Arthur C. Brooks wrote the book on happiness. Literally, wrote a book, and teaches one of the most popular courses at Harvard, which is filled with very driven, but not necessarily happy, people. Perhaps they’ve gotten to Harvard, realized they aren’t really much happier after all, and have decided to take a closer look at what makes people tick. A lot of us are chasing the “if onlies” of life. If only I had that. If only I had a new car. If only I got into Harvard. THEN I’ll be happy. I’ve got some bad news. No, you won’t. You might get a jolt of dopamine from achieving a goal, or getting a shiny new toy, but happiness is an altogether different animal.
Professor Brooks says most of us are on the dopamine hamster wheel. We’re chasing fame, fortune, power, and pleasure. But none of those things will solve our long-term happiness problem. He gives us a simple prescription: “We need to substitute these with four good habits which will satisfy us. They are faith, family, friends and work that serves other people. We must be unbelievably ambitious about them.”
So, next time you find yourself in the doldrums, or anxious but you’re not quite sure about what, maybe take a peek inside your head and see what makes you tick. What are you telling yourself? What are you pursuing in life? Are you on that dopamine hamster wheel, thinking that a little more money, or toys, or ephemeral pleasures will eventually add up to happiness? Or are you telling yourself that you don’t deserve to be happy?
Start by giving yourself what you probably routinely give others: give yourself some grace. Appreciate that you’re not perfect, there’s always work to do, but you, as a human being, deserve to be happy.
We’re of the mind that Professor Brooks is onto something. Perhaps faith, family, friends, and work that serves other people are the long-term keys to a happy, fulfilling life. That, and protein.
Until next week!
Alex & Alicia