It’s 2025. At your routine physical, the doctor takes your blood pressure, checks your cholesterol level, and asks a standard health question: How’s your love life? Sound too personal?
In the future, it may be common sense. It seems that some of the best medicine for good health doesn’t come in a pill. It comes from love. “When we have love in our lives, we get sick less frequently and recover more quickly from illness,” says Steven Dubovsky, M.D., professor of psychiatry and internal medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. “Just as we require food and water, we need affection to be healthy human beings.\”
Just how does love get into the body and influence biological processes? Because research in the field is very new, doctors admit they don’t yet have all the answers.
One thing is clear, however. While love is undoubtedly the granddaddy of all emotions, it is a physical wonder as well, resulting in concrete metabolic and biochemical changes. And many of these changes have health-boosting benefits. Just about any kind of deep devotion and caring will do. From the heady high of a new romance to spending time with treasured friends and family members, here are the newest findings about how this crazy thing called love can help keep the doctor away.
6 Ways to Boost Love’s Benefits
Try these tips to get the optimum wellness rewards from your relationships.
- Get touchy-feely. Hugging, cuddling or holding hands lowers stress hormones and elevates oxytocin, a hormone that appears to improve cardiovascular health.
- Make each day Valentine’s Day. Don’t wait for a holiday, birthday or anniversary to offer gifts of love. Giving romantic cards, flowers or heartfelt presents, as well as saying words of endearment, positively impacts the body’s metabolism.
- Seal it with a kiss. Planting a kiss on your sweetheart, child or even close friend awakens nerve endings and releases health-boosting oxytocin.
- Resolve conflicts with kindness. It’s human nature for us to occasionally argue with people we love. But hostile spats can cause blood pressure and heart rates to soar. Discuss problems calmly. If things begin to heat up, say something nice. You’ll be amazed at how soon would-be fights fizzle and a feeling of relaxation returns.
- Take part in child’s play. Pitching in with the school play or peewee soccer team helps you feel closer to your child and expands your social network. Children are a wonderful ticket to meeting new people, which benefits psychological health.
- Pet your pooch. Stroking and talking to animals has a calming effect on the body. Studies show that pet owners have lower blood pressure, stress and cholesterol levels.
Reblogged from jansheehan.com
