Women with more social support are unlikely to die

Women aged 50 to 79 who thought they had more social support were less likely to die during the study, according to a new study led by Dr. Nancy Freeborne, Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Health and Services. of George Mason University.

Posted in Menopause This week, Freeborne and colleagues from several institutions examined perceived social support and its effects on cardiovascular disease and mortality. Even after taking into account factors such as income, race and education that could have affected the results, researchers still found that women in this age group who reported lower levels of social support had a higher mortality rate over the 10 years of the study. In fact, they found that when women reported a very low level of social support, this predicts a 20% higher risk of death over those 10 years or more than those reporting very high levels of social support. .

"Perceived functional social support, which we looked at in this study, can indicate whether a person thinks they can get emotional support, advice, or just the company of people to do fun with, which can help reduce stress, "explains Freeborne. "It reminds us that sometimes the simplest things, like reaching out to a loved one, can have the most profound impact."

Although Freeborne and her colleagues also planned to see women with higher perceived social support see a reduction in CVD due to previous studies on men, after eliminating these same confounding variables, they did not find such relationship.

"It is interesting to note that previous studies linking social support to cardiovascular disease did not take into account the effect of income." For this study, it is the factor that has most influenced this relationship, "explains Freeborne.

To date, it is the largest study on the impact of perceived social support on cardiovascular disease and mortality. Freeborne and her colleagues examined data on more than 90,000 postmenopausal women aged 50 to 79 from the observational study of the Women's Health Initiative. They included data collected over a 10-year period, including demographics, psychosocial measures (perceived social support), health behaviors, diet, and body mbad index.

Researchers suggest that social media perceptions of social support, the increase in the number of CVDs among women since data collection, and the age and gender differences in determine whether social support has different impacts based on gender or different time periods. a lifetime.

"The main finding of our study is that in a longitudinal study of postmenopausal women, lower social support was badociated with a slightly higher mortality risk," says Freeborne. This suggests that social support could serve as a health intervention for some people. It is easy and cost-effective to provide social support to others. "