Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Secret to a Long and Happy Life | Dr Julian Abel #317

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today's Bite Size episode is brought to you by AG1, a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It includes vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. It's really tasty and has been in my own life for over five years. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to

Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 138 of the podcast with Dr. Julian Abel, a retired consultant in palliative care. Now in this clip, Julian explains why compassion and social connection matter so much for our health, our happiness, and our longevity. When you look at the evidence of what happens from the positive side of compassion, the evidence is really profound. And compassion is the basis of social relationships.

Starting point is 00:01:53 And there are numerous studies out there which show that social relationships have a profound impact on health. And in particular, there's one that I always quote by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, and it's the impact of social relationships on mortality. And good social relationships are more powerful than pretty much any other intervention we have, including giving up smoking, drinking, diet, exercise, whatever else you care to mention, helping us live longer. If you give up smoking, you reduce your risk of dying significantly, but not as much as social relationships. I mean, Julian, for me, compassion, it feels almost like it's the right thing to do. It feels good to us as a human being when we're compassionate to another individual. So what's interesting for me is that you're showcasing in your book a load of science that is backing up kind of what we already know, right?

Starting point is 00:02:58 I think that's exactly right. And those moments where we feel the love and compassion, we all recognize them. And there might be deeply profound moments like the moment we first see our child or we kiss the person we love or we hold our child's hand. Any of those moments, they're more than just an emotion. You can feel physically different, but they happen on a small scale as well. Like when you go to the shops and you chat to somebody and when you have that conversation, you feel like, well, this is good. I enjoyed that and I appreciate it. And all of those things, although they are an emotion, they also have got

Starting point is 00:03:46 a physical, a biochemical and hormonal components to them. But I guess the essence is that we all know that it's the right thing. If people are feeling loved and secure, then their anxiety goes down, their pain levels go down. Actually, then you start producing all the things that we naturally produce as human beings, including oxytocin and endorphins, which are the morphine-type compounds that we naturally produce inside us. I can't get that out of my head that your biochemistry, your biology, your physiology changes when you have close social connections, when you're compassionate to someone else or they're compassionate to you. It matters so much. I mean, it's heartening, isn't it? It's heartwarming. Those moments,

Starting point is 00:04:37 even those light moments where you have a gentle chat with someone, they're heartwarming. We feel it and it sustains us. We need to elevate compassion as a high value. It's something that we need to pay attention to all the time and something that is as applicable in our personal lives, our lives at home, as it is in our schools, our places of work, our politics, our media. And it's not just that it's a nice thing to have. It has a profound impact on everything we do and everything we touch. And even from a personal perspective, if you want to lead a happy, healthy, long life, it's all about relationships. And the basis of relationships is compassion. Somewhere along the line, this capitalist society where we've been encouraged to buy more,

Starting point is 00:05:33 get more things, get more stuff, you know, get these houses, insulate ourselves off from people around us, we've kind of lost it somewhere, haven't we? That actually, it's who we are as humans. I think that's right, that we have been led to believe that acquisition is the way of happiness, that if we have beauty, if we have lots of goods, that's how we're going to become happy. In my work as a palliative care physician, I talk to literally thousands of people about dying and about what was important in their lives. And often through the course of the illness, people felt a diminished sense of self because they couldn't do the things that they recognized as being important to them. But with the people around them, they appreciated the people around them for their love and their care and their friendship.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And so we tend to have this kind of dual standard of thinking about acquisition as being meaningful for ourselves. But we appreciate the people around us for the quality of the character they have. the people around us for the quality of the character they have. It sounds like you're saying that we judge other people differently from the way we judge ourselves. Precisely. I mean, it was a conversation I had with nearly every one of my patients. I would say, look, have a think about the people who you really appreciate the most and why you appreciate them. And people would say it's about their love, about their kindness. And they would say, has the love and the kindness diminished in you, even though you're not able to do the things that you usually do? And of course, the love and the kindness is still there. And I would say we don't need to be terminally ill to appreciate that.

Starting point is 00:07:30 That's something that we can do now in our lives. If you like the people around you for the qualities of their character, it's kind of at the heart of it all is, well, you can develop those qualities yourself. You don't have to become a saint. You can just do a little bit and become a slightly kinder, a more compassionate person. The people who used to impress me the most were the people who came to the end of their lives and they weren't great businessmen or didn't have massive achievement, but they approached death with a sense of peace.

Starting point is 00:08:11 And when I asked them about that, they said, well, I've had a good life. I've had good people around me. I've had great children. I love my husband and my wife, and I feel satisfied with the way that life went. And to be so open and face death in this peaceful way, to me, was really inspirational and impressive. And then I remember one gentleman who I treated who was a great international business leader. And he was talking about this subject and his wife was there. And he was saying, I can't run my businesses and who am I?

Starting point is 00:08:57 And so we talked about appreciating people for who they are and why he loved his wife and all of that. And then his wife popped up and said, people loved you for who you are, not because you were a great business leader. And she encapsulated that so perfectly, just the way that she said it. And of course, he understood about the powerful impact of the kindness and quite a lot of the physical and emotional suffering that he had got better quite quickly. And he was able to die peacefully with that. And I think that it absolutely gives you a sense of what's important in life and what's not quite so important yeah i think many of us myself included need that reminder about what truly is important i think we we get so caught up in small things don't we actually when it's all said and done it comes down to connection and relationships that's what we value the most hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip i hope you have a wonderful weekend and i'll be back next week with my long form conversational wednesday and the latest episode of bite science next friday

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Secret to a Long and Happy Life | Dr Julian Abel #317

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.