The Jack Eason Podcast – Episode 017 – Andrew Steptoe

Together, Jack Eason and Andrew Steptoe, look at how psychological experiences can influence health. Steptoe notes that social relationships are an very important part of people’s overall experience. Understanding how those thing effect health have been a major theme throughout his research.

Two major groups were studied by Andrew Steptoe during the course of his research. The aged and youth. A majority of his time is spent talking with, analyzing, and studying older people as they move through their 50’s 60’s and into old age. Among older people, the effects of isolation and loneliness tend to have a marked effect on physical health outcomes.

The difference is stark against the younger demographic. Heart disease and diabetes is less prevelant in the group who are also experiencing isolation and loneliness.

Andrew Steptoe is a British psychologist and epidemiologist and Head of the Department of Behavioural Science and Health at University College London. He is a pioneer in health psychology and behavioural medicine in the UK and internationally, known for his work on psychosocial factors in cardiovascular disease, ageing, and positive wellbeing and health.

Steptoe has made significant contributions to several aspects of health psychology and behavioural medicine. He has been involved in the identification of the psychobiological pathways that link population-level risk factors such as low socioeconomic status and work stress with atherogenesis and cardiovascular disease progression.

He has advanced understanding of how psychosocial factors get under the skin by discovering that inflammatory cytokines and haemostatic factors respond acutely to mental stress, and that rates of post-stress recovery in biological measures differ critically across psychosocial risk groups.

Professor Andrew Steptoe’s research, and contact information, can be found online at https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=ASTEP39