"To change your life you have to change your priorities." ~ Mark Twain
Every December I was obsessed with air pollution. This was the time when my husband and I took our little daughter to Poland, the country I was born in, to spend Christmas with my extended family. There my fears would hit the roof.
As soon as the heating season begins and the coal begins to burn in household stoves, Polish air no longer becomes breathable. Particle pollution can exceed the standards by up to 3000 percent. On some days you can actually feel the air burning in your throat and tasting of sulfur. And so I would keep the windows closed and forbid my daughter to venture outside.
I bought smog masks with the best filters. I even thought about skipping Polish Christmas altogether and settling in our tiny French village with just the three of us for some time to enjoy the pristine air. That would be the responsible thing, right? After all, my top priority as a mother, my daughter – and us, her parents – is to keep her in good health.
In the meantime, however, I wrote stories about health and psychology, rummaged through hundreds of research papers each year, and spoke to dozens of scientists. And finally I realized what a mistake skipping Christmas in Poland would have been.
Pollution, no matter how terrible it was, was nowhere as important for the physical health of our family as for time with relatives and friends, the more the better.
There was a piece of scientific work that I particularly noticed: a large meta-analysis in which researchers examined 148 studies with over 300,000 participants. The scientists found that people with stronger social relationships had a 50 percent higher chance of living until the end of this study – an average of 7.5 years – than those who had less healthy social capital.
Some of the relationships were particularly life-extending. High-quality marriages and friendships, as well as the ability to rely on neighbors, meant an astonishingly 60 percent lower mortality risk. The absence of such relationships would have a far greater impact on life expectancy than smoking fifteen cigarettes a day (50 percent higher mortality), far more than excessive drinking (30 percent), or living in a couch potato (about 20 percent). Air pollution had a low mortality risk of 5 percent.
I was obviously worried about wrong things. Denying my daughter and me the pleasure of being surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins was far worse for our health than the amount of sulfur oxides in the Polish air.
I also misunderstood other things. When my daughter was a toddler, I went through a vegetable obsession. We were living in Philadelphia at that time, just a few minutes' walk from a well-stocked Whole Foods. This shop was my heaven and hell in one.
At the time, I believed that in order to stay healthy and live long, my small family needed access to the best organic food, the more varied the better (hence Whole Foods as Heaven). I thought I needed kale, okra and enoki mushrooms. I needed organic raw honey and heirloom quinoa.
But it was also hell, because each shopping spree not only meant spending in the millions, but also the question of which type of black rice was the best or whether one should buy arugula or broccoli raab. A waste of time that I really didn't have as a working mother.
But over the years I have learned that proper nutrition is important for health, but not the holy grail that I made it. Certainly no one needs heirloom quinoa to stay healthy. As long as you don't overdo candy and fast food and get your five servings of fruits and vegetables a day (apples and carrots are perfectly fine), you'll be fine.
For me, the time I wasted organic greens would have been better spent volunteering, being attentive and kind to my fellow human beings.
Consider the numbers: Studies show that eating six servings of fruit and vegetables a day can reduce the risk of premature death by 26 percent. It can even be 44 percent for volunteering. Simple friendliness is less able to target our leukocyte genes to inflammation – which is good because chronic inflammation has been linked to diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes. In the meantime, most of the so-called superfoods are overwhelmed.
All of this made me think about the so-called French paradox – something I see all around me – that my neighbors and friends eat a lot of greasy cheese and sugary Viennese sausages and still stay slim and healthy (the French actually belong to them) the longest living nations on the planet).
We often meet in the neighbors' gardens for an aperitif – a simple table is set with snacks on the lawn – fatty sausages (nitrates! Saturated fats!), Baguettes (simple carbohydrates!), Cakes and much more from wine. We sat down for hours, ate, drank, talked – and considered it dinner.
Children disappeared into the wilderness of the garden unsupervised, looked for bird nests and hunted beetles, and reappeared from time to time to grab a bite of baguette or cheese. Healthy? Not according to Whole Foods standards, no. But maybe it's not so much what the French eat, but how they eat – slowly, surrounded by others?
My seven-year-old French daughter absolutely refuses to eat alone and won't touch her dinner or lunch unless someone sits at the table with her – we just had a scene about it a few days ago.
This connection, this togetherness can be what keeps the French arteries healthy. Science finally shows that our social hormones such as oxytocin and serotonin, our vagus nerve, our insula and amygdala in the brain, and even our gut microbes, link our physical health to how mindfully and socially we live our lives.
It took years and hundreds of research to convince me, but I learned my lessons. I am no longer obsessed with the best organic products. I no longer think about skipping vacation in Poland because of pollution. Instead, I spend my newly gained time and energy helping my neighbors to teach my daughter kindness, meditate, be mindful, meet my friends more often, and connect with my husband, thinking of holding hands ( to promote oxytocin).
It helps all of us to stay healthy better than organic quinoa and the cleanest air. And as a side effect, it also makes us particularly happy.
About Marta Zaraska
Marta Zaraska is a Polish-Canadian science journalist. She is the author of Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism, and Kindness Can Help You Live 100. It was published by Penguin Random House in June and supported by Adam Grant, Joshua Becker, Emeran Mayer and others. She has written for The Washington Post, Scientific American, New Scientist, The Atlantic, etc.
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