There is interesting research which indicates that your communication skills have a fairly direct effect on your health. Remembering that good communication and listening skills have an impact on interpersonal and professional relationships and on your social networks, consider the following:

In a study done to identify factors which can be used to evaluate heart attack risk, all the usual suspects were rounded up and examined: existing coronary artery damage, high serum cholesterol levels, smoking, sedentary life style, etc. But, a surprising finding emerged from this study; there is a better predictor than any of these generally-examined factors. In fact, the best single predictor of risk for heart attack is chronic exposure to hostile verbal interactions. That’s right; verbal hostility is more closely linked to heart attack risk than any of the things you’ve been hearing about all these years. It would seem, therefore, that lowering the level of hostility in your environment is not just a way to feel happier; it may well be a good way to live longer and healthier.

In a study of women diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, an attempt was made to identify factors which contribute to these women’s five-year survival rate. Now understand, cancer diagnosed this late is not curable, so we tend to talk in terms of years of survival. For these women, the best single predictor of survival was not the stage of the cancer or the tumor grading or even the specific treatment administered. It was the presence of joy in their lives. Seems crazy, doesn’t it?

Patients with elevated blood pressure often need to use medication for the rest of their lives. Researchers are always interested in ways to help these patients lower their blood pressure with less medication; reduced dosages mean lower risk for side effects, especially for drugs taken for many years. One study of this sort emerged from an earlier one that measured blood pressure in people engaged in conversation. It found that when people got ready to talk and then talked, their blood pressures rose; and when they stopped talking and listened, their blood pressures fell. It also showed that the more skillful listeners showed a more marked blood pressure drop. The second study looked at the effect of listening in people who have abnormally high blood pressure; and it showed just what was expected. Good listening is a practice which lowers blood pressure, irrespective of medication. Engaging in skillful listening was effective in entirely replacing medication in some people and in others enabled the use of reduced doses.

Now it used to be that "real" scientists, the sort who engage in medical research, and "soft" scientists, those who do social science research, didn’t have much to talk about. Biologists and neuroanatomists and doctors were sure that the way to understand people was to look at the people’s parts in a very objective, chemical/physiological kind of way; they thought of social scientists as sort of engaging in magical thinking. And social scientists looked at the hard scientists as rigid and narrow. And they didn't consult together.

But all that has changed in the past few years; a new field has grown up called psychoneuroimmunology, which combines the work of psychologists (the magical thinkers) with that of neurologists and immunologists (the rigid, narrow ones). And the combination has been amazingly productive. There turn out to be all kinds of links between psychological state and immunologic function; in other words, a healthy psychological state can contribute to your ability to fight infections. Studies indicate that healthy coping with stressors and emotions improve immunologic functioning. In fact, one method that measurably improved such function was keeping a diary of important events in your life and writing about your feelings about these events. Helping others also turned out to be good for your immune system; one study even showed that you don't have to go out there and help people for yourself--just watching film of other people helping others was beneficial. No surprise that improved relationships also play a role in bolstering your immune system.

Many studies of death rates have also shown a link between your emotional/psychological state and your physical health. In studies of death rates from all causes (disease, injury, whatever), it was found that people of any age who volunteer at least once a week have less than half the death rate of non-volunteers. And people with few friends and isolated lives have over two times the death rate of those with strong social and family networks. The biggest impact of all was noted in a study which indicates people who are hostile, cynical, and suspicious are four to seven times more likely to die than those who do not have these characteristics.

Now it seems to me that many of the factors discussed here are dependent to some degree on your communication skills and your ability to establish good relationships. We've talked about all kinds of ways to improve skills, and we'll talk about more of these as time goes on. One issue we're coming to soon is language skills needed to defuse and avoid verbal hostility. Seems worth it, doesn't it? You could live longer!