From the Inside Out
STOP & SMELL THE FLOWERS

THEY TORE OUT MY HEART
and Stomped That Sucker Flat
Columnist Lewis Grizzard celebrates his Southern Heritage and is full of stories about faithful dogs, good country music and more. "Georgia's Mark Twain" will make you smile, laugh, cry and everything in between as he weaves another magical story. You'll learn about his growing up to need open heart surgery and how he'll never be able to look at a plate of BBQ the same again! Lewis loved his momma, loved his country and loved his culture, and he wrote about the things he loved in a way that if you didn't love them too, at least you could understand why he did. This volume details some of his tribulations related to his eventually fatal coronary disease.
By Lewis Grizzard

Getting Connected: There is an actual, physical chunk of brain that runs your emotions called the limbic brain. You can trace its development back a hundred million years. You can see it on an MRI. Every second you spend with other people, your limbic brain is tuning in to them, being changed by their moods, and changing theirs in turn. It's a constant, life-affirming limbic dance. Experimental psychologists have known for decades that we share moods. If you don't believe me, just think of the people who make you feel better simply by walking into a room. These sorts of interactions feel so good (directly and unconsciously) that we would wither away without them. This is why you should never underrate the emotional side of your life.

Women are better than men at keeping the limbic dance going by working to ensure that families stay connected as the years go by and by building lasting friendships and deep connections from the many different aspects of their lives. High school and college friends, friends from work, friends from raising children together, from neighborhood committees, from shared vacations — sure, some of these bonds and friendships fall away as part of the natural cycle of growing and changing, but most women find new friendships to replace them. Women who don't find close friendships, who have trouble keeping up connections, need to make an effort to change those patterns.

Hundreds of research studies confirm that isolation hurts us and connection heals us through the same physical mechanisms as exercise and healthy diet. Blood vessels are measurably more elastic, the heart's ability to respond to extraordinary demands is higher, cardiac inflammatory protein levels are lower, and blood pressure response to exercise is better in more connected people. Their stress-hormone blood profiles are also measurably healthier than those of isolated people.

Building a Community: Sadly, I see people in my medical practice who give up on connection, who stop living years before they die. These are women and men who feel so overwhelmed by the prospect of getting out and building new connections that they stop trying. Our society — with its emphasis on the traditional family structure and the workplace as centers of social togetherness — doesn't help matters. People who lack either of those have to work doubly hard. But the consequences of not making connections are so devastating that you cannot allow yourself to retreat into isolation. The stakes are too high. A study of more than 4,000 women and men in Alameda County, California, showed a direct link between the size of one's social circle and survival, with larger circles bringing ever-greater longevity. Women with fewer than six regular contacts outside the house had significantly higher rates of blocked coronary arteries, were more likely to be obese and have diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression, and were two and a half times more likely to die over the course of the study than those with an extensive social network.

Having either a good marriage or just one close friend cuts the risk of mortality by a third, and the benefit increases the more your circle broadens. It's reassuring to note that both quality and quantity count. Some people have a few close friends or family members, while others have a broad network of involvement with their community. Either works well, though it's best to have both. Talk to any nurse about how much it matters for patients to have visitors in the hospital — about the difference in outcome for those people who have a steady stream of visitors, a wall covered with get-well cards, flowers obscuring the monitors and tubing. But the thing is, you can't wait until trouble strikes to build your community. You have to work at it day after day, make the calls, make the effort, be the hospital visitor years before you need one yourself.

Optimism is an extraordinary limbic resource and is available to everyone because it's a learned skill. You can decide to be optimistic with remarkable success. Not Pollyanna optimistic, but glass-half-full optimistic, and it's worth the effort. Women who are optimistic about motherhood before pregnancy have a much lower risk of postpartum depression. Optimistic women have lower mortality rates from cancer and heart disease. It seems to help to approach illness with a positive, optimistic attitude, which may lower blood pressure and improve immune function. You recover from bypass surgery faster and better, you get out of bed sooner after back surgery, and you go back to work and regular exercise sooner. Anger doubles your risk of heart disease. But perceiving your work as satisfying cuts your risk of heart disease in half.

Being Compassionate: While some people are intuitively gifted at saying and doing exactly the right thing at the right moment, the rest of us can learn how. "Comfort boils down to empathy and acknowledgment," says New York City-based psychotherapist Jane Greer, PhD, author of Gridlock: Finding the Courage to Move on in Love, Work and Life, in fact, is so powerful that it doesn't require the gloss of eloquence. "When someone affirms what you are feeling and conveys an understanding of your distress, their sensitivity helps you feel safe and understood," says Dr. Greer. When you offer to bring a sick friend a cup of hot soup, stop by to change the bedsheets, or send a bouquet of flowers with a warm note, you put acknowledgment into action.

The problem is, how much compassion we have for others is sometimes driven by the degree of compassion we have for ourselves — and, let's face it, most of us are pretty tough on ourselves. "If you're stoic and you have a stiff upper lip, it could be hard to muster up the empathy and compassion for someone else's plight," says Dr. Greer. That was the case with a woman I know who'd been having problems with her boss. When she told her boyfriend that she feared being fired, he said, "What's the big deal? You'll call the headhunters and find another job." He didn't stop to acknowledge her wounded self-esteem, her fear of change, or her financial concerns — that is, all the fallout that comes from your job's being imperiled.

There does tend to be a gender divide when it comes to giving — as well as receiving — comfort. According to Marianne Legato, MD, founder of the Partnership for Gender-Specific Medicine at Columbia University, in New York City, men will often hunker down in solitude rather than reveal a need for comfort; they're also less skilled at soothing others: "A man will focus on solving the problem. He'll give you directions to accomplishing whatever goal he thinks you should be achieving," she says.

On the other hand, women tend to be much better at offering a sympathetic ear and a shoulder to cry on. Women are not necessarily good, however, at allowing themselves to be comforted. Many of us have become so hyperefficient at juggling the demands of work and family that we've lost the art of being tended to. And we feel ashamed to even need tending. "Accepting comfort is like accepting a gift, but that can stir up feelings of helplessness and vulnerability in some of us," says Dr. Greer. "We think that by saying 'I don't need it' we can make ourselves feel stronger."

Finding a Hug: We can all do better at giving and receiving comfort. Comfort is often rooted in the flesh: Just a hug or the touch of a hand causes our brains to release the chemical serotonin, which improves mood. Remember, too, the healing power of words. The right words — whether they are spoken in our church or synagogue, or come to us via Chicken Soup for the Soul stories or public oratory — have the power to soothe the spirit and revive the heart.

If you're the one in need of comfort, wisdom lies in knowing where to find it. "When things are really terrible, you need people who will affirm whatever you're feeling," says Dr. Legato. "Sit down with a friend or relative and ask if they have time to hear you discuss a problem and help you with it. You can't do it in five minutes. Make sure they have an hour or more to spend."

When there's no human to talk to — or give you a hug — a pet may do just as well. Studies have shown that pets help lower blood pressure and mitigate stress on the heart. Animals are affectionate, allow us to snuggle with them and — in a slight improvement over spouses, children, and friends — never judge us or offer unwanted advice.

In the end, it may be that we are simply hardwired to do good. A study at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor reported that among older people, those who reported helping others — even if it was just giving emotional support to a spouse — were half as likely to die within five years as those who did not. "If comforting behavior can be linked with health and longevity, the implications are significant," says Stephen G. Post, PhD, professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. "People who live generous lives soon become aware that in the reasonable giving of self lies the discovery of self."

Creating Satisfaction in Life: Generations ago, extended families provided rich, lifelong limbic safety nets and connections to the group. In the days before TV, telephones, electric lights, and convenience stores, this wasn't a choice. There was nothing to do but be within a group. The great gift of traditional societies was that you were a necessary part of the community your whole life. Okinawans, a group of people living on an island off the coast of Japan, have the greatest documented longevity of any population on earth, and in their culture older people are integral parts of the community until they draw their last breath. At 90, or 100, they are respected for their life experience and are relevant to the group.

It seems as if that model is vanishing from the planet. But our society still has all those limbic connections — you just have to find them and put them together for yourself. For those who are frantically busy with work, the office can be an important source of connection and gratification, which helps to explain why increasing numbers of Americans of both sexes are choosing to work past retirement. Sometimes this is for financial reasons, of course, but sometimes it's due to the increasing recognition that work has a value beyond the paycheck. Part of the value is simply in the structure — in having a reason to get out of the house in the morning. Part of the value is in the social interactions that come automatically with most jobs. And part of it is the importance of still having a role in the tribe: a defined niche in the great social order.

There are other pathways to connectedness, too, such as spirituality. A search for meaning is too profound and personal for facile advice giving, but we do know that for limbic reasons alone you should be on the journey. The growing number of reasonably well-done studies on spirituality point to its importance in our lives for both mental and physical health. Many people who search for meaning in their lives and their experience via religion or spirituality survive loss, cancer, and heart disease better and have healthier immune chemistry and lower risks of stroke and Alzheimer's disease than those who do not. People who report that faith is an important part of their lives have higher levels of life satisfaction and emotional well-being. You can decide for yourself how much of the positive effect stems from the increased social connections offered by organized religion and how much is from something ineffable, but the simple message is that it is important to look for the meaning in your life's experience.

Every single human being on the planet craves limbic connections. We just need to head out the door to build them. The tide of social atrophy — of limbic decay — is not that strong. It's just remorselessly steady. The ultimate message is swim against the tide, every day. If you work at it steadily, it is almost impossible to fail.

Vince on Good Morning America

Vince at the Cash Cabin in Tennessee