"Perceiving an action activates the mental representation of this action, which in turn leads to the performance of the action." - Ap Dijksterhuis & John Bargh
Providing Care to Ailing Loved Ones Can Actually Extend Your Life
Typically the thought of caring for an ailing loved one in the throes of old age and poor health is associated with feelings of hassle and stress, but a new study by Brown and colleagues at the University at Michigan suggests that taking care of a partner in need can actually extend your life. While past research has often found the opposite effect to be true (e.g., caring for a needy partner shortens the life of the caregiver), Brown argues that this confusion has resulted from earlier work on this topic conflating two very distinct and separate issues – the stress associated with caring for a loved one and the actual act of caring itself. Specifically, this study found that participants who provided more than 14 hours of care to a loved one in poor health (per week) over the course of the study were significantly less likely to die over the course of the 7 year study than were participants who provided no care. Astonishingly, the researchers reported that these caregivers were, on average, 36 per cent less likely to die to over the course of the study when compared to their non-care-giving counterparts, even when baseline health and medical history were controlled for in the analyses. While no formal account detailing the processes underlying this finding were proposed, one theory put forward implicates the hormone oxytocin which has been found to play in a role in caring behaviors, cellular repair, and storage of cell nutrients. Unfortunately, just because an individual had a needy partner did not subsequently mean these protective benefits were be bestowed upon him or her, and, in fact, participants living with a partner who was experiencing poor health were often found to die earlier. Even though this finding may seem to contradict the previous finding that care-giving lengthens the life of the caregiver, having a needy partner was not synonymous with providing care to that partner.
