Visiting a grandparent just once a month can help them live longer, new research reveals

New research has found that simply visiting a grandparent once a month can help them to live for longer, with isolation from family being linked to an increased risk of early death. 

Grandparents today are often incredibly involved with family life. From the childcare they offer with more than half of grandparents looking after their grandchildren while their parents are at work, or for the hobbies, habits, and life lessons they pass down, grandparents are an important part of family life for many. 

But, for some families, that's just not the case. Perhaps some families have moved away from where their kids' grandparents live, or some may be estranged from their grandparents. Sometimes that seperation is a sad fact of life, sometimes it's a purposeful choice as many parents refuse to let grandparents who don't respect their parenting choices see their kids at all. But there may be a dire cost for those grandparents who do not see their families if new data collected by researchers at the University of Glasgow is anything to go by. 

In good news for those who regularly see their grandparents, the researchers found that those who are visited by family members even as little as just once a month, have a lower risk of dying than those who are isolated from their nearest and dearest. In fact, those who weren't visited once a month had a whopping 39% higher chance of dying. 

There has been pervious research into grandparent health and how it is impacted by family life - one study even showed that grandparents are likely to live for longer if their children have kids later in life. But it's not just grandparents who can benefit from good relationships and monthly visits. Some research has shown that children who have a good relationship with their grandparents have less behavioural and emotional problems, and other studies have revealed how mothers are less likely to struggle with their mental health if their kids’ grandparents live close by and can be easily visited. This new study, however, is one of the most detailed and conclusive done for a while. 

Studying a variety of UK adults, 458,146 who were aged between 37 and 73 to be exact, the study concluded that while any social interaction played a part in increasing life expectancy, visits from friends and family was the most vital part in curbing an early death. According to the data, even if a grandparent took part in weekly group activities, that didn't lessen the risk of early death if they also weren't visited by friends and family. 

The study's lead author, Hamish Foster, pointed out the fact that more frequent visits than just once a month actually didn't further reduce the risk of early death, though why this is isn't exactly clear.

"We also tried to take into account lots of other factors that could explain the findings — like how old people were, their gender, their socioeconomic status, whether they were a smoker and more," Foster added. "And even after removing those factors from the equation it still showed that these social connections were important for risk of death."

But for those who don't get to see their grandparents as much as they'd like, for whatever reason, the research can't completely promise that monthly visits will improve their health, but the researchers also say it can't hurt. The study's co-author Jason Gill explained, “The risk seems to be (among) people who are very isolated, and never ever see friends and family or see them less frequently than once a month.

“Ensuring that you visit your lonely and isolated relatives is a super helpful thing to do because it seems to be important that people have a visit at least once a month.”

Navigating relationships with grandparents, fitting in time to see them around busy work schedules and family commitments, can be difficult no matter how well you do, or don't, get on. Parents are often left asking if grandparents love their grandkids more than their own children and, while it's sweet, the nicknames kids call their grandparents as they run off to them for advice instead of their own parents, can leave you feeling left out. If you're really struggling to keep or build a relationship with a grandparent, these are our 10 tips for building relationships with ‘estranged’ grandparents.