W hat do you do to be healthy? Let’s say you follow the advice of doctors, health blogs, and wellness influencers perfectly. You walk 10,000 steps a day. You get eight hours of quality sleep at night.
You eat plenty of fresh vegetables and avoid processed foods. You work through challenges with a therapist. You meditate and take hot baths for self-care.
Your physical and mental health improve as a result – but only up to a point. The problem with traditional health advice is that it overlooks one of the most important ingredients: human connection. You can’t be fully healthy if you don’t have a name to write down as your emergency contact.
If you don’t see family except for a few hours over the holidays. If you lack close friends to share experiences with. Or if you don’t have enough alone time to reconnect with yourself.
You value your romantic and platonic relationships, but do you know they determine how long you live? When you spend time with family or friends, invite a co-worker to lunch, or strike up a conversation with a neighbor, do you realize the interaction influences whether or not you – and they – will develop heart disease, diabetes, depression, or dementia? Health is not only physical or mental. Health is also social. Social health is the aspect of overall health and wellbeing that comes from connection – and it is vastly underappreciated.
Whereas physical health is about your body and mental health is about your mind, social health is about y.