The doctor after studying 80-year-old happiness was 'shaken' by the greatest predictor of a long and healthy life

What if the secret of longevity was not in mind or in the gut – but in the heart?

Speaking at the New York Times Well’s inaugural festival on Wednesday, psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Robert Waldinger announced that he and his team were “shocked” by “the biggest predictors of who would live long and stay healthy.”

Waldinger, Director of Harvard Adult Development Study.

Apparently, the researchers were suspected of these findings.

“How can our relationships get into our bodies and actually change our physiology?” Waldinger was music.

“The best hypothesis is that it has to do with stress, which in fact relationships – when they are good – are stress facilitators.”

After all, the way we feel physically manifested-you can feel your pulse starts to compete and your breathing is accelerated when something worrying or induced of anxiety happens, and the opposite is true when you calm down, explain it.

Having someone to light up, as it turns out, plays a big role in this.

“People who have nothing to do with other people, those people do not have the same mechanisms of stress arrangement in their lives that people with good relationships have,” Waldinger said.

The secret sauce is admitting that it is not enough to have relationships – you have to cultivate them as you would be.

Most of us don’t expect some jobs to fit physically – why would relationships be different?

“People who were the best in the relationship were the people who were actively involved in staying in touch with people, people who really just only their relationships,” he said. “Most of us take our relationship as good.”

He went so far as to say people who are intended to maintain contacts and promote relationship relationships had a “superpower” that “went under the radar”.

The best part is that you do not need to plan a detailed trip or reserve a connecting activity to get the benefits. Small things, how to make eye-to-eye contact with the barist by making your coffee or-jesit to stop TSA by checking your passport, give us “small well-being hits”, according to Waldinger.

The last appeal from a growing number of experts reminding people that social connection is a fundamental part of being human – and an essential aspect of good health.

A recent study even identified accompaniment as one of the six factors you can check that reduced the risk of dementia, stroke and depression – adding existing research showing that it is a lifespan.

It seems easy to forget in today’s increasingly virtual world, as psychotherapist Kathryn emerling previously told the post she describes “socialization very often” for her customers.

Elsewhere in NYT’s conversation, Waldinger noted that our culture may not always direct us in the right direction when it comes to happy.

“These signs of achievements that we all set for our – money, awards, followers on social media – those signs of achievements are measurable, so they look like they will make us happy, but they do not,” he said.

“Culture can sell this idea that if we just do all the right things, we will be happy all the time,” he added. “That’s not true. No one is happy all the time.”

That being said, the next time you want to feel like a superhero – try calling your mother.