391: The Rabbit Effect with Dr. Kelli Harding
Age Less / Live More
Lucas Rockwood
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2019
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Loneliness, living alone and poor social connections are as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s worse for you than obesity. And you’re much more likely to suffer from dementia, heart disease, and depression if you’re isolated and alone(1). The importance of social connections and touch has been proven in both human and animal models, but the solution is much less obvious.
How do combat the loneliness epidemic? My guest on this week’s show has some excellent ideas.
Listen & Learn:
- How loneliness is one of the biggest risk factors for all-cause mortality
- The difference between feeling alone and feeling isolated
- How positive social connection is more important than just social connection
- Why education and volunteering can be simple ways to find connection
- How our digital age is making loneliness the norm
Links & Resources:
About Our Guest:
Dr. Kelli Harding is a board-certified psychiatrist focused on emotional wellbeing and the interplay between mental and physical health. She’s the author of THE RABBIT EFFECT: Live Longer, Happier, and Healthier with the Groundbreaking Science of Kindness.
Nutritional Tip of the Week:
- Meat-Only Diet
Got Questions?
- Send me a voicemail here: Ask Lucas a Question
- Or write to us: [email protected]
Like the Show?
Leave us a Review on iTunes
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | As the world becomes more and more digital, we're simultaneously becoming more and more |
| 0:07.3 | tribal. |
| 0:08.3 | And many of these tribes start online, but then they quickly go offline. |
| 0:12.6 | Conference businesses for everything from video games to marketing, |
| 0:16.1 | to sales, to you name it, are bigger than they've ever been before. |
| 0:20.4 | Concerts are absolutely huge. There's bands that I used to |
| 0:23.7 | listen to in the 90s that were never famous to begin with that are now on tour |
| 0:27.8 | again. Concerts are sold out. Burning Man is huge. Coachella is huge. What's |
| 0:32.3 | going on? Why are people so desperate to connect? |
| 0:34.8 | Well, it's because most of the year people are really, really lonely and the statistics |
| 0:38.9 | on loneliness are really pretty depressing. |
| 0:41.7 | It's pretty clear that loneliness can be as dangerous |
| 0:45.0 | as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Chronic loneliness can be worse for you than |
| 0:49.2 | obesity in terms of the long-term health risks. |
| 0:53.0 | The one predictive factor that's pretty consistent across groups |
| 0:57.0 | is that people with strong social connections |
| 0:59.0 | tend to live longer, healthier, happier lives. |
| 1:02.0 | It's a really challenging thing to hear because how do you do that? How do you fix that? Here I am 41 years old. How do I how do I set myself up for really strong social connections going forward. |
| 1:13.5 | That's much more difficult than making sure I get in a 10K |
| 1:18.3 | run today or making sure I get on the mat and do my yoga practice. |
| 1:22.0 | Much more challenging to engineer and more challenging |
| 1:24.7 | now than ever where we have these tools that connect us but also keep us lonely. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Lucas Rockwood, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Lucas Rockwood and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.