Toxic relationships and aging are directly connected, and Dr. Theresa Pauly says the mechanism is measurable in your saliva.

The quality of your relationships is almost as important to your physical health as smoking, exercise, or body weight. Most people do not think about who they spend time with as a health behavior. Dr. Theresa Pauly’s lab does. She measures cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, and has found that social stressors produce a higher response than physical ones. Holding your hand in a bucket of ice water is hard on the body. Being judged by a critical panel in an unplanned job interview is harder.

Older adults tend to navigate this better. They get angry less often, resolve conflict internally more frequently, and use reappraisal to reframe difficult interactions rather than escalating them. They also prune their social networks more deliberately, letting go of relationships that drain them. Dr. Theresa Pauly says those strategies are not just wisdom. They are why some people age better than others.

Topics: toxic relationships aging, cortisol stress relationships, social health aging, reappraisal stress, healthy aging research

GUEST: Dr. Theresa Pauly

Originally aired on2026-05-08