Love & Survival

Our survival depends on the healing power of love, intimacy, and relationships. Although there is more scientific evidence now than ever demonstrating how simple changes in diet and lifestyle may cause substantial improvements in health and well-being, one of the most powerful interventions - and often the most meaningful for me and for the people with whom I work, both colleagues and patients - is the healing power of love and intimacy and the emotional and spiritual transformation that often result from these. These include:

• Rediscovering inner sources of peace, joy, and well-being
• Learning how to communicate in ways that enhance intimacy with loved ones
• Creating a healthy community of friends and family
• Developing more compassion and empathy for both yourself and others
• Experiencing directly the transcendent interconnectedness of life

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. If a new drug had the same impact, virtually every doctor in the country would be recommending it for their patients. It would be malpractice not to prescribe it-yet, with few exceptions, we doctors do not learn much about the healing power of love, intimacy, and transformation in our medical training.

Medicine today tends to focus primarily on the physical and mechanistic: drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. However, I am not aware of any other factor in medicine - not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery - that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes. Loneliness and isolation affect our health in several ways:

• They increase the likelihood that we may engage in behaviors like smoking and overeating that adversely affect our health and decrease the likelihood that we will make lifestyle choices that are life-enhancing rather than self-destructive

   

• They increase the likelihood of disease and premature death from all causes by 200-500% or more, independent of behaviors, through different mechanisms, many of which are not fully understood

   

• They keep us from fully experiencing the joy of everyday life

In short, anything that promotes a sense of isolation often leads to illness and suffering. Anything that promotes a sense of love and intimacy, connection and community is healing. Healing is a process of becoming whole. Even the words "heal" and "whole" and "holy" come from the same root.

There is a deep spiritual hunger in this country. The real epidemic in our culture is not only physical heart disease, but also what I call emotional and spiritual heart disease-that is, the profound sense of loneliness, isolation, alienation, and depression that are so prevalent in our culture with the breakdown of the social structures that used to provide us with a sense of connection and community. It is, to me, a root of the illness, cynicism, and violence in our society.