The Link Between A Healthy Relationship And A Healthy Body

Most individuals take care of their body — devote thought, time, money and effort to ensuring they maintain their physical, mental and emotional health, as well as their aesthetic health – looking after and improving their appearance through weight loss regimes, removal of unwanted hair and other cosmetic procedures. To this end, diet, exercise, adequate rest, water intake, even supplements and vitamins may be recommended, if not drugs under prescription. Those charged with mental and emotional healthcare may, in addition to the foregoing, consider the health of the relationships an individual has, as a key prerequisite for good psychological health; but the link between a healthy relationship and physical health may, on the surface, be deemed at best tenuous.

Medical and scientific research is however revealing the importance of healthy relationships, especially because it has a definite link to physical health. A January 12, 2012 online article states: “Scientists at UCLA’s school of medicine found negative social interactions can lead to increased inflammation, which may in turn cause a host of illnesses from cancer to heart disease and high blood pressure.” Furthermore, Professor David Goldberg of the Institute of Psychiatry, London, UK, reports in a February 2010 article titled: ‘The detection and treatment of depression in the physically ill’: ”Depressive illness can also precede a physical disease. It has been linked to coronary heart disease, stroke, colorectal cancer, back pain, irritable bowel syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and possibly type 2 diabetes”.

All these examples within the medical profession make the point succinctly that it is important to pay attention to health in relationships, especially as it not only affects emotional and mental health, but physical health as well. This is not news to those interested in spiritual healing. Christian healer and respected author, Mary Baker Eddy, best known for her internationally acclaimed book Science and Health with key to the Scriptures, mentions in one of her articles that innumerable human wills, opinions, ambitions, tastes, and loves, as well as the differing cultures, characters, constitutions and backgrounds of people, result in friction in relationships. She recommends that spiritual qualities of patience, geniality, appreciation for the beautiful and good, a settled equanimity and a broad charity, are practical antidotes for agitation, aggravation, ruffled feathers and the taking of offense, that lead to unhealthy relationships.

Expressing these qualities is not beyond an individual, specifically because spirituality starts with God as the primary relationship of man. Acknowledging the reality and priority of this relationship immediately begins to bring a sense of peace even to human interactions. Realising, as the Bible says in I John 4:8, that God is Love itself — a benign, tender, benevolent, albeit spiritual presence, in charge of human relationships, brings health to relationships, because it is underpinned by the immutability of spirituality. This spiritual activity or exercise improves the quality of human relationships, whether they are close and familial, or casual and temporarily associative; and healthy relationships are found to be directly beneficial to health — emotional, mental, and yes, physical.
m_asolanke@hotmail.com