There’s too much focus on the behaviors of health and too little on the emotional and social environment of those behaviors.
For example, it’s becoming common knowledge that the Mediterranean diet provides many longevity and brain health benefits. It’s also true that in many Mediterranean cultures, many adults drink wine regularly. Yet, given recent understandings of the nature of alcohol consumption, we also can no longer pretend that any amount of alcohol has health benefits. It doesn’t.
But there’s something called the Roseto Effect.
The Roseto effect is the term for the intangible benefits that a close-knit community experiences resulting in a tangible benefit of a reduced rate of heart disease.
It is named for Roseto, Pennsylvania. From 1954 to 1961, Roseto had nearly no heart attacks for the otherwise high-risk group of men 55 to 64. At the time, this was a strongly Italian community with significant social bonding between its members. They drank lots of wine, smoked cigars, ate a less healthy version of the Mediterranean diet. Many of the men even worked in slate quarries and suffered from various illnesses from the gasses and dust.
Fifty years later, as the Roseto residents shed their Italian social structure and became more Americanized in the years following the initial study, heart disease rates increased, becoming like those of neighboring towns.
Despite demonstrably unhealthy work environments (the slate quarry), demonstrably unhealthy lifestyle choices (significant wine consumption, cigar smoking, meatballs and sausages fried in lard), they had demonstrably low rates heart attacks and heart disease.
A sense of community, connection, and of belonging is impossible to quantify in terms of its health benefits, but it is clearly significant.
These longevity gurus who tediously spend their extra time on wacky health measures to extend lifespan predictably garner a lot of interest. (Thought exercise: What’s the point of extending lifespan if you spend all of your time on tasks related to extending lifespan?) However, it seems fairly apparent that mindset, mental health, and social connection matter as much as “what” you do.
Exercise that you hate will be less beneficial.
Healthy food that you hate (and eat alone while on your phone) will be less beneficial. And as the Roseto effect shows, the converse may be true as well: that unhealthy food may be less harmful if consumed in a convivial, warm, social atmosphere.
The takeaway: Make sure to bring a sense of enjoyment and connection to your health behaviors so the health benefits get amplified.