Science has long known that support from loved ones –in the form of touch, tenderness or kind words – really can make people feel better.  As well as reducing a patient’s immediate discomfort and stress, the benefits can continue in the form of reduced blood pressure and improved immune function.  Now some fascinating research shows that giving the support can be as beneficial as receiving it.

A study  in the January 2012 edition of Psychosomatic Medicine, a peer-reviewed health psychology journal, reported on what happens to the brain activity of women who provide support to their partners.  In the study, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to scan the brains of 20 young women whose boyfriends were standing just outside the scanner.  As the women’s brains were being scanned, the poor fellas were subjected to painful electric shocks – something they willingly signed up for in the name of science.  At various times, the women were able to hold their boyfriends’ arm.  At other times, the women had to watch their boyfriends endure the shocks without being able to do anything.  To provide a ‘control condition’, there were times when the boyfriends did not receive any shock at all and the women could either touch or not touch their arm.

The researchers found that simply touching their boyfriends’ arm as they experienced pain activated the ‘reward’ regions of the women’s brains, the same areas that are active in response to chocolate, sex and winning money.  In other words, giving support was processed as a very basic type of rewarding experience.  There was another interesting finding:  the brains of the women who were able to touch their boyfriends during the shocks showed decreased activity in the region of the brain known to be involved in stress and fear.

What does all this mean?  Naomi Eisenberger, the senior author of the study, speculated that humans are wired to give support to those close to us.  This increases the chances of the support giver surviving and in evolutionary terms, making it more likely that healthy genes will be passed on.  By making it psychologically rewarding to give support, nature is sneakily encouraging us to do it more often.

What I would love to know – and no doubt the researchers are on to it – is whether the results would be the same if it were women receiving the electric shocks while their boyfriends provided the soothing touch!

When did walking become an ‘activity’, something we go out of our way to do?  Sometimes we get in a car, drive to a carpark, walk for an hour or two, return to the car and then call it – depending on your country of origin – ‘hiking’ (US), ‘bushwalking’ (Australia), ‘rambling (UK) or ‘tramping’ (New Zealand).  It’s something so unlike the activity we do every day that we give it a special name.  Writer Bill Bryson, in his entertaining volume about his adventures on the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, observes how Americans have come to view the great outdoors.  Nature, he writes, is either ruthlessly conquered and destroyed, or treated as something “holy and remote.”

I can personally vouch for this. When I arrived at the ticket counter at the grandly beautiful Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina, I asked whether I could walk from the carpark to the estate so that I could enjoy the grounds.  The receptionist, sensing that I had just landed from another planet, said, “Oh it’s too far to walk.”  When I inquired how far, she said, “At least two miles.”  When I told her I was happy to cover this distance on foot and in fact preferred to do so, she huffed, “We don’t allow anyone to walk.”

With attitudes like this, it’s hardly surprising that people are getting less exercise than they need.  The Center for Disease Control‘s recent physical activity statistics showed that fully one-quarter of the American population engages in absolutely no leisure time activity whatsoever.  And by this, the CDC means not even a single walk around the block once a week.  No wonder the Appalachian Trail is held in such high esteem.

It was something of a fluke therefore, or perhaps serendipity, that I came across a book today about the psychology of consumer behavior. It was called Shiny Objects: Why We Spend Money We Don’t Have in Search of Happiness We Can’t Buy, by James Roberts, a professor of marketing. The theme of the book is that the more we shop, the more unhappy we become. In a neat illustration of this, the author has a simple graph showing that between 1970 and the present day, America’s gross domestic product skyrocketed and personal spending increased to record levels, yet individual levels of self-reported happiness flatlined over the same period. Americans are apparently no happier today than in 1970 despite the accumulation of material possessions, or maybe because of it. The author notes that shopping, like drinking alcohol and compulsive eating, can be addictive because the brain releases neurotransmitters such as dopamine, inducing sensations of pleasure. It’s not called “retail therapy” for nothing; as far as the brain is concerned, shopping is a form of self-medication. Unfortunately, the effects are short-lived and shoppers, like alcoholics and compulsive eaters, go back again and again for another “dose”.  It is not uncommon for people to recover from an eating disorder, only to develop an addiction to shopping.

Why are we in the western world so slow to see these connections?  In Bhutan, a small, landlocked country near the Himalayas, citizens’ quality of life is not measured by wealth (or gross domestic product) but by “Gross National Happiness,” an official indicator of  psychological and social well-being unrelated to economic prosperity.  I was pleased to read that in July 2011, 68 countries, including western nations such as Canada, the UK and Australia, co-sponsored a United Nations resolution to encourage the adoption of gross national happiness indicators.  Notably absent from the United Nations resolution:  the USA.

The moral to the story?  You’ll find plenty of shiny objects at the shopping mall.  But happiness?  Not so much.

Oh, and by the way, I bought James Roberts’ book. I can be a consumer when I need to be.

Call me old-fashioned, but I was under the impression that pharmacies were supposed to promote health – selling medicine, vitamins, bandages and other handy items to make you feel better. Apparently not. Pharmacies (at least in the US) have no qualms about selling cigarettes, beer, wine, and every artificially sweetened and flavored candy bar you can imagine – hardly the health-promoting products you might expect. I read somewhere that one of the chain pharmacies is to start its own brand-name beer. How ethically responsible is that? There is something incongruous about being able to pick up your chocolates in one aisle and your diabetes products in the next. Pharmacies are really the one-stop shop, with nicotine patches located just feet from the cigarette counter.

I can hear the libertarians arguing about personal responsibility and that it’s not up to big business to monitor what we put in our bodies. They might even suggest that selling candy bars or cigarettes at a pharmacy is actually a good thing because customers can at least get counselled on the potential harmful effects of these products. I don’t buy that for a second. Human beings have many wonderful qualities, but self-restraint is often not high on that list. Sometimes we need a bit of help.

I will believe that pharmacies are serious about health when sales associates start competing for the highest sales of apples or blueberries, but somehow I think it will be a long wait.

Oh, and just out of curiosity, I looked up the origin of the word ‘pharmacy’. It derives from an ancient Greek word meaning ‘magic charm’ or ‘poison’. Ironic, huh?

Pharmaceutical companies spend an absolute fortune marketing their products and I would guess that 50% of the ads in prime time are for pills and potions.  When I first moved here, I thought Americans must just be really, really sick, but I soon realized that drug companies are just extremely successful at marketing.  The problem is that we get so swept up in the hype that the medical profession – and that includes mental health professionals – underestimate the power of simple things: going for a walk, talking to a friend, and communing with nature. All these sound so woo-woo, hippie-like that we don’t take them seriously.

Well, science is apparently finally coming around to the idea that grandmothers often really do have the answers.  In fact, there is a quiet revolution going on in the medical community.  You may not know, for example, that patients with depression are now being prescribed nature walking and fish oil capsules instead of antidepressants.  That’s because these have been shown in rigorous scientific tests to be at least as effective as medication – but much cheaper and without the side effects.

You’ll be hearing and reading a lot more about these ‘therapeutic lifestyle changes’ (yes, there is even a scientific-sounding name for them) both in the news and on this blog. In the meantime, turn off the computer and go for a walk on the beach or in the bush or the forest or wherever you can go easily.  Research has shown that communing with nature improves mood, attention, and cognition as well as academic performance.

But it’s a fine line:  the researchers found that in the most individualistic societies (such as the United States), the greater independence from family seems to be related to increased levels of stress and ill-being.  On the other hand, citizens of countries where personal freedoms and family ties are important, such as northern European nations, tend to be the happiest, least stressed and rated their well-being highest.

What’s the blog about?

It’s an attempt to jot down the many amazing things I’m learning about the human mind and body as I progress through a Master of Science degree in Clinical Health Psychology. It’s about the myriad things that science is discovering and how we can apply these new discoveries right now to our own lives.  It’s about how our mental health influences our physical health and vice versa….. and what we can do about it.