Talking Through a Bad Day Turns Off the Body's Stress Alarm

Picture this: something upsetting happens during the day, and you cannot stop replaying it. Your heart beats faster, you start to sweat a little, and you just feel off. That is what researchers call the fight or flight response, the body's alarm system for danger.

Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has followed the same people for decades, says talking the episode through with someone you trust lets that response subside. Go home to someone, or call a friend on the phone, and you can literally feel your body calm down and return to equilibrium.

At first, the research team did not believe that relationships could get into the body and shape health. About 30 years ago, they began to see that people with warm connections stayed physically stronger, kept sharper brains in old age, and reported greater well-being. The connected people had less depression, were less likely to develop diabetes and heart disease, and recovered faster when they got sick.

Waldinger says the leading explanation is stress, one of the best supported theories with pretty good evidence so far but not settled science. Stress is unavoidable, but the body is meant to settle once a threat passes. People who are isolated and lonely lack those everyday regulators, so they stay stuck in low grade fight or flight, with lasting inflammation and a steady wash of stress chemicals that erode happiness and wear down different systems in the body.

Built up over years, that chronic stress and inflammation show up in how people age. Happier, more connected people tend to age more slowly and stay capable longer, with the diseases of aging arriving later and sometimes not at all. Waldinger is careful to say it is not a guarantee, any more than not smoking, exercising, and getting regular health care is, but tending a close bond is part of the same maintenance.