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Why Love and Intimacy is important for Survial
It is widely recognized that love, intimacy, social relationships and affiliations have powerful effects on physical health. Some studies that show these effects are:
In Alameda County, California (Berkman et al., 1979), men and women who lacked ties to others were 1.9 to 3.1 times more likely to die than those who had many contacts.
A 1982 study in Tecumseh, Michigan (House et al., 1982), showed a similar association for men.
In 1982, D. Blazer reported similar results from a sample of elderly men and women in Durham County, North Carolina.
Schoenbach et al. (1986), in a study in Evans County, Georgia, used a measure of contacts modified from the Alameda County study and found risks to be significant in older white men and women even when controlling for risk factors, although some racial and gender differences were observed.
In Sweden 1985, the Goteborg study (Welin et al., 1985) showed that, in different cohorts of men, love, intimacy, social relationships and affiliations isolation proved to be a larger risk factor for dying than the medical risk factors.
A 1987 report by Orth-Gomér and Johnson reported significantly increased risks for men and women who have been socially isolated.
In a study of men and women in eastern Finland, Kaplan and associates (1988) demonstrated that an index of social connections predicts mortality risk for men but not for women, independent of cardiovascular risk factors.
Several more recent studies, including the Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly (EPESE) studies, confirm the continued importance of social relationships into late life.
Furthermore, studies of large cohorts of men and women in a large health maintenance organization (Vogt et al., 1992) and male health professionals (Kawachi et al., 1996) suggest that social networks are, in general, more strongly related to mortality than to the incidence of disease.
Studies in Danish men (Pennix et al., 1997) and Japanese men and women (Sugisawa et al., 1994) also indicate that social isolation and social support are related to mortality.
love, intimacy, social relationships and affiliations have been found to predict a broad array of health outcomes, from survival after heart attacks to disease progression, functioning, and the onset and course of infectious diseases.
Psychosocial interviews with 2320 male survivors of a heart attacke participants in the beta-Blocker Heart Attack Trial, permitted the definition of two variables strongly associated with an increased three-year mortality risk. Those who were classified as being socially isolated and having a high degree of life stress had more than four times the risk of death as men who had low levels of both stress and isolation.
These psychosoical effects had a much more powerful effect on premature deaths than did the beta-Blocker drug being tested,
In the mid-1970s as a student at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, Dean Ornish noticed that "We'd cut people open, we'd bypass the blocked arteries. The patients would get home, eat the same foods, smoke, not manage stress, not exercise and, more often than not, the bypass would just clog up." In 1990 Ornish published a study that concluded that heart disease was not only preventable but could be reversed with drastic lifestyle changes.
Ornish dedicated his latest book, Love and Survival. In it he states that love and intimacy are among the most powerful factors in health and illness, even though the medical profession mostly ignores them.
Ornish doesn't know anything in medicine, including diet or drugs or surgery or anything, that has a greater impact on our health and premature death and disease, across the board, from virtually all causes, as the healing power of love and intimacy. And even though the heart is the symbol of love, these aren't things that we talk about in cardiology meetings or really as part of medical training. Yet study after study has shown that people who feel lonely and depressed and isolated have three to five times the rate of premature death and disease, across the board, when compared to those who have a sense of love and connection and community.
We ignore these ideas at our own peril; and this book intent is to raise that level of awareness so that people know what a powerful difference it can make, and once we know that then we can bring different choices and reverse those trends.
Any kind of intimacy can heal. It's a basic human need that often goes unfulfilled in our culture. It matters not only in the quality of life, but in the quantity. It's a need as basic as eating and breathing and sleeping. When we don't know that, there are serious consequences that threaten not only our well-being, but also our survival.
What about scientific research to prove the intimacy thesis? One study of 126 healthy men chosen from Harvard classes in the 1950s found that 91% of participants who didn't think their relationship with their mothers had been warm had a serious disease in midlife, such as coronary artery disease, high blood pressure or duodenal ulcer. Compare that with the 45% of those who perceived themselves as having warm feelings for Mom and were diagnosed with the same ailments. Warm feelings for Dad had similar results. What the book doesn't tell us is how many people did or did not have warm relationships with their parents.
The Secrets of Joy Workshop - Nov 3 – 5, 20010 - Eagle Crest Resort - Bend, Oregon
Why is joy and happiness important?
Medicine today tends to focus primarily on: drugs, surgery, genes, germs, microbes, and molecules. However, there isn’t any other factor in medicine – not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery – that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness and premature death from all causes than loneliness and isolation. Most people do not know what to do about it, WE DO!
Numerous studies demonstrates that changes in lifestyle can change our health. There are four areas these studies are concern with:
1. Diet
2. Exercise
3. Stress Management
4. Love & Intimacy
Diet, Exercise, and Stress Management are things you can accomplish on you own.
Love & Intimacy involves OTHER PEOPLE.
You cannot do it alone.
You have to learn to work with other people.
There is very little information how to do this, how to have more Intimacy, how to be connected, how to be satisfied with life, how to have a meaning life,or a sense of well being that is not religious base.
This is why the divorce rate would not be over 50%. We do not know how to have the things we want the most - Love & Intimacy. Our workshop will demonstrate how to do it.
Our Workshop is not about Diet or Exerice, it is 6 days of understand how to have more Love and Intimacy in your life.
Any kind of intimacy can heal. It's a basic human need that often goes unfulfilled in our culture. It matters not only in the quality of life, but in the quantity. It's a need as basic as eating and breathing and sleeping. When we don't know that, there are serious consequences that threaten not only our well-being, but also our survival. Studies show that people who feel isolated are three to five times more likely to die prematurely and get sick than those who don't.
This web site is about on how to increase your Love & Intimacy and improve your life satisfaction.
Have you ever wondered from makes you tick?
Why are some people always happy and other always sad? Why are some people are very agreeable and other like to argue.
For sake of argument, we call the patterns people have –
Temperaments. You can call it what ever you want. Your life’s strategy, your style, your way, your nature or “just the way you are.”. It makes no difference what you call it, it exists and we can define nine
Temperaments Types.
Would it surprise you to learn that you were born that way? You were born with a fixed
Temperament Type. It is in your genes. You inherited your
Temperament Type from your ancestors. Yes, your
Temperament is fixed as you were conceived, before you even started your life’s process. It is nearly impossible to change your fixed
Temperament Type, but you can learn to “manage it.”
The research from
Positive Philosophy shows that 50% of your happiness is determined by your
Temperament Type. That means that 50% of being loved, having Intimacy, being connected, being satisfied with life, having a meaning life, and a sense of well being is a function of your genes you were born with. But:
1. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the happier you can be.
2. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the better you will understand yourself, your family, your friends, your customers, and the culture in you live.
3. The better you “manage” your
Temperament, the more successful you have with money, marriage, family, health and the society in which you.
Our genes may determine our
Temperament, but they do not control our Fate.
Connection is the root of sickness and health. It is what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for his or her patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it -- yet, with few exceptions, doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.
The question is how to have more connections? How do increase your love and intimacy? If you alreadyknew how, you would have already done it. Attendance at our Workshop will give you new methods and proven techinque to help you. The methods and techinques were developed from the research from Positive Philosophy.
The Secrets of Joy Workshop - Nov 3 – 5, 20010 - Eagle Crest Resort - Bend, Oregon
Just Wait Foundation, the organizer of this workshop is not affiliated with the Dr Dean Ornish or the Preventive Medicine Research Instute, nor is trained or certified by them.
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