2015-10-14
523
A 61-year-old executive was in the midst of a divorce when he was stricken last spring, and he had fallen ______________ (1) with friends and family members. The man’s doctor advised him to change his __________ (2), start exercising and __________ (3) smoking. He also prescribed drugs to lower cholesterol and ___________________ (4). It was sound advice but the patient discovered that he needed to do more. He joined a support group and reordered his ______________ (5), placing relashionships at the top of the list instead of the bottom. His health has improved _____________ (6) since then, and so has his outlook on life.
Medicine today __________ primarily ___ (7) drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules. Yet love and intimacy are ______________ (8) what makes us sick and what makes us well. Connections with other people affect not only the quality of our lives but also our _____________ (9). Study after study find that people who feel lonely are many times more likely to get ___________________ (10) disease than those who have a strong sense of ______________ (11) and community. In part, this is because people who are lonely are more likely to engage in __________________ (12) behaviors. Patients _________________ (13) cigarettes, food, alcohol or drugs.
________________ (14), love protects your heart in ways that we don’t completely understand. Researchers studied almost 10,000 married men and found that those who answered “yes” to the simple question – “Does your wife show you her love?” – had ________________ (15) less chest pain. Men and women with heart disease who were _________ (16) and lacked confidants were three times as likely to have died after five years. In all the studies, the _________________ (17) of love were independent of other ______________ (18).
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Awareness is the first step in _____________ (19). When we understand the connection between how we live and how long we live, it’s easier to make different choices. Instead of viewing the time we spend with friends and family as ___________ (20), we can see that these relationships are among the most powerful determinants of our _____________ (21) and survival. We are hard-wired to help each other. Science is documenting the healing values of love, intimacy, community, compassion, forgiveness, altruism and service – values that are part of almost all ______________ (22) traditions as well as many secular ones. Seen in this context, being unselfish may be the most self-serving ____________ (23) to life, for it helps free both the giver and recipient from suffering, disease and ______________ (24) death. Rediscovering the wisdom of love and compassion may help us survive at a time when the world so badly needs it.
(After Dean Ornish, M.D., Newsweek, 2005.)
