Love is the key to longevity - The Love Quotient (2023)

The pursuit of health and happiness is a universal goal shared by people of all races, religions, creeds, and cultures. Throughout the centuries, mankind has searched for an elixir that can preserve youth and prolong life.

What if the answer is within us and has been with us all along?

In this article we will explore the relationship between longevity or longevity and thatlove quotient🇧🇷 By referencing multiple studies from different disciplines, we show how people with a higher love quotient can expect longer and healthier lives.

love sustains life

ANew York TimesA 1988 article highlighted the work of psychoanalysts John Bowlby and René Spitz. The article showed that touch, as a form of love, is necessary for the development of the baby. He talks about the unusually high mortality rate of children placed in orphanages after World War II. We learned it from the studyCertain brain chemicals released by touch, or others released by touch, may be responsible for developmental failure in these children.🇧🇷 Therefore, it is extremely important that babies receive love from their parents in the form of contact, e.g.

Early attachments affect our ability to learn, love, and relate to others.

Bowlby later developedtheoretical connection, which states thatAttachment is an innate and crucial survival need.Psychologists still refer to Bowlby's theories for encouraging physical affection as part of healthy parenting. newer oneArticlesays: “This care is necessary for the brain to learn to associate human contact with pleasure. This association is one of the foundations of empathy. We first connected through gentle touches and shared smiles."

The importance of continuous connection

Barbara Fredrickson, author ofLove 2.0: how our latest emotion affects everything we feel, think, do and become, says that “People experience emotions together, particularly positive ones, and when they do, experience has shown that they remind them that they are part of something bigger than themselves… when we connect, a positive emotion transmitted by two brains wheel and body at the same time.It's a powerful and uplifting feeling, and it's proving to be extraordinarily healthy..“

Love is necessary at every stage of life.

As biological organisms that are still growing and evolving, we still need love to grow in a healthy way. AWashington Post2016 article discusses the results of afor studyin which researchers followed 14,000 participants and collected data on their social lives and physical well-being from adolescence to late adulthood. "The results confirmthe value of social ties in improving a person's physical health, from adolescence to the 90s and beyond,” the article says.

in otherfor studyThe researchers found that “married people are 14% less likely to die of a heart attack than single people. Although it was not clear from the study why married patients were more likely to survive, the researchers notethe importance of physical and psychological support after a serious health event.“

yet anotherfor studyshowed thatsocial relationships affect telomere length🇧🇷 Feelings of ambivalence in social relationships have been associated with shorter telomere lengths. “Telomeres are the caps at the ends of our chromosomes that protect them from damage and are an indicator of aging at the cellular level.Shorter telomeres are associated with higher incidence of disease and mortality.“

Having healthy and loving relationships contributes to good health at all stages of life, from childhood to old age.🇧🇷 The studies mentioned above show that this can be physically measured by looking at differences in death rates and telomere length between people who have a loving support network and those who don't.

An important part of increasing our love quotient is developing and nurturing the relationship with our inner child. When we have a healthy and loving relationship with ourselves, it leads to happier and healthier relationships with others, whether they are co-workers, friends, family members, or lovers.Because we practice self-love and self-care, we naturally bring more love, compassion, understanding, empathy, and joy to our interactions with others.

In the next section, we examine the importance of relationships for longevity in more detail and discuss how increasing a person's IQ can lead to healthier relationships.

How to live to be a hundred

According to the United Nations, the average American can expect to live well into their 80s. 🇧🇷

Astudy 2004initiated by Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain identified Sardinia, Italy as a Blue Zone. Dan Buettner popularized the Blue Zone concept. In collaboration with National Geographic, he studied some of the world's oldest cultures to identify common factors that contribute to health and longevity.

The Pes and Poulain study found that Sardinia, Italy, has one of the regions with the highest concentrations of centenarians in the world. Dan Buettner expanded on the work of Pes and Poulain by identifying five blue zones; Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece and Loma Linda, California.

Büttner also investigated why people lived extraordinarily long lives in these five blue zones. He identified nine habits that contribute to longevity. People in the Blue Zones move naturally, have sense and methods to manage or reduce stress, eat a mostly plant-based diet, eat until they are 80% full, and drink a glass or two of wine during happy hour. .

This is where it gets really interesting… People in the blue zones also have a sense of belonging or community, put loved ones first, and have friends who encourage healthy behaviors.

Three of the nine behaviors that contribute to a longer life are based on human connection and healthy relationships..

Other studies show similar results

In 2017, the Harvard Gazette published aArticleExamine an ongoing Harvard study that began in 1938 and followed 268 Harvard sophomores to determine what factors lead to healthy and happy lives. In 2017, only 19 of the original cohort were alive and over the age of 90, but the study was later expanded to include the descendants of the participants, who numbered 1,300 and were between the ages of 50 and 60 in 2017.

The researchers "studied the participants' health histories and broader lives, including their successes and failures in their careers and marriages." The findings show that“Our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful impact on our health.Furthermore, the study found that "close relationships, more than money or fame, are what make people happy throughout their lives."

Louis Cozolino, a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, takes a similar position. In his book Timeless: Nature's Formula for Health and Longevity, Cozolino writes"Of all the experiences we need to survive and thrive, connecting with others is the most meaningful and important."Cozolino says that the human brain is designed for interpersonal connections, and therefore "a life that maximizes social interaction and person-to-person contact is good for the brain at all stages, especially the aging brain." .

In Cozolino's earlier book, The Neuroscience of Human Relations, it was discussed that "People who have more social support tend to have better mental health, cardiovascular health, immune function, and cognitive performance.The article also claims that "social relationships help calm our stress response system" by reducing the stress hormone cortisol, which is known to "devastate our physical and emotional health."

How can increasing a person's IQ lead to healthier and happier relationships? When we increase our love quotient, we love ourselves more and therefore have more love to give. Approaching life and relationships from a place of love leads to better relationships and less stress, two of the most important factors in improving life expectancy and preventing disease.

love can change our brain

Based on attachment theory and the principles established by Bowlby and his colleagues, experts today believe that adults whose attachment to their permanent/surrogate mother is disrupted or deficient are vulnerable to attachment and health problems grown ups.

The good news is that these problems can probably be fixed.

"I think it's possible to reverse some of that damage as an adult through lifestyle choices and changes in mindset and behavior," he says.cristobal bergland, world-class endurance athlete, trainer, author, and public health advocate.

According to the UKgut focuswhich is based on scientific developments in neuroscience: "The neural pathways of the brain and the broader nervous system are relatively shapeless at birth and undergo much of their development during the first three years of life in response to relational experiences with primary caregivers It also revealed the inherent 'plasticity' of the brain: its ability to forge new neural connections in response to experience."

It is never too late to give ourselves the love and attention that we need and want. EITHER"I love you" practicefostered as part of developing one's quality of life satisfies the needs of our inner child. When we integrate the practice of "I love you" and other practical self-love steps, we heal the wounds of the past and increase our inner reservoir of love. We also create new neural pathways that affect the way we relate to ourselves and others.

How LQ can improve longevity

When we approach life from a framework of self-love and self-care, we tend to prioritize our health more often. Our perspective on the things we do changes. Today we see things like exercise or healthy eating as an act of self-love. We may have experienced these things as distressing before, but when our perspective on them changes, they become much more bearable; In fact, they can become likeable and seen as an expression of self-love.

Self-love includes everything we do that is good for us, such as eating a balanced diet, exercising, allowing ourselves time off, getting enough sleep, and meditating. These are some of the healthy habits that a high QoL person can cultivate.

As we increase our quality of life, we tend to make decisions that are kind and loving to us more often. This is a helpful question to ask ourselves as we cultivate our LQ and self-love... "This is the kindest, most loving thing I can do for myself."

People with high quality of life have better relationships. Because we love each other so much, we have so much more love to share. Our relationships automatically improve when we operate from larger places of love. This not only reaffirms our identity, who we are, and the life choices we make, but also allows for more frequent moments of happiness and connection—in other words, the moments that shape our lives. The support we receive from our networks makes the difficult times easier to bear and the good times sweeter to enjoy. Connection, validation, community, and belonging have been shown to increase longevity.

The heart is the physical manifestation of love.

Although the biological function of the heart is to pump blood to our body, it is also considered the physical place where love is born and where love is received.

We often associate the heart with love. Have you ever used the phrase "what a touching story" to show that something you heard made you feel good or that he/she is "heartbroken"?

It is no coincidence that both longevity and life itself are associated with love. Our heart keeps us going, so to speak, and when the heart stops, the body becomes lifeless. We could say that life begins and ends with the heart, in more ways than one.

Love is the energy of life and the key to longevity!