Take two social ties and call me in the morning
It’s a striking statistic: socially isolated individuals are two to three times more likely to die prematurely, especially if they are in poor health. "Social isolation kills, but how and why?" asks James S. House, Ph.D., of the University of Michigan in a recent editorial in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine. This is a typical question of modern science, which is consistently stymied when it attempts to pinpoint the "active ingredient" in mind-body health factors.
One reason there is no progress in science’s attempts to understand mind-body health is that modern science conducts research in this area with the active ingredient defined out of the picture. The scientific worldview insists that something—some THING—must be the root cause of every physical phenomenon. Perception, as influenced by belief, can't be measured, therefore, it is irrelevant in scientific research.
Baffled and frustrated scientists keep turning their data this way and that, trying to come up with a hypothesis that fits the narrow, concrete scientific perspective. Surely there is something measurable that will clarify the health-promoting particulars of these unscientifically vague connections with other people that we call "social ties."
Dr. House considers various hypotheses, all based on this scientific conviction that measurable factors are the source of health. Could it be that social ties improve health because people do things for each other—offer support, listen sympathetically, and take actual physical care of the sick person? Or is it that a person with social support is influenced to take better care of himself—to eat better, exercise more, see doctors regularly, or stop smoking? Or, he speculates, widening the net, "Another hypothesis is that social ties link people with diffuse social networks that facilitate access to a wide range of resources supportive of health, such as medical referral networks, access to others dealing with similar problems, or opportunities to acquire needed resources via jobs, shopping, or financial institutions."
This obsession with the concrete sends researchers down the blind alley of counting hypothesized mind-body factors. If one social tie is good, then more might be better. From such theories come studies like the one in which university students were infected with cold virus, then their social contacts were tallied over the next week or so. The resulting data revealed that the more social contacts a person has, the less chance they have of getting a cold. From this, one might conclude that going out a lot prevents colds—or maybe that not studying prevents colds. But actually, the idea that the quantity of social contacts prevents colds is like hypothesizing that students who brush their teeth diligently get better grades. There may be a correlation found, but the tooth brushing is not the cause of scholarly success, but instead a reflection of a certain attitude or mindset.
The scientific search for what makes social ties health promoting is driven by the desire for practical application—something that would enable a doctor to examine a patient and announce, "Bill, I see what your problem is! You’re not getting the optimum number of specifically health-supporting social contacts each week. Let’s double your usual dose for a while. I think you’ll find yourself feeling better in no time!"
While science struggles with trying to understand the active ingredient in social ties, I suggest we ponder it from a true mind-body perspective. The mind-body approach indicates that it is rarely the external circumstances of our lives that determine our health, but instead our beliefs about our circumstances. If social isolation represents lonely abandonment to an individual, if it leads to feeling hopeless and helpless, if it is the result of a persistently pessimistic thinking style, then health is compromised.
This suggests the hypothesis that science has not been able to consider: social isolation is a symptom, not a cause. Until it is recognized that there is an as-yet invisible energy underlying every aspect of our physical selves, and that this energy is shaped by our perception, science will not be able to isolate the active ingredient in such mind-body factors as social isolation.