health benefits

Who hasn’t enjoyed the guilty pleasure of sharing an outrageously rich and caloric dessert with a best friend and indulging with abandon? If you have, you better not make a habit of it. A new report published on July 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine seems to suggest that obesity can spread among friends like a virus...

If you need another excuse for getting out of a fractured friendship, here it is: Stressful friendships may be bad for your heart.

 

A new study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine (June 25, 2007) suggests that the stress of unpredictable love-hate relationships, characterized by ambivalence, can lead to elevations in blood pressure...

A recent article by Chris Crowley and Dr. Henry S. Lodge on MSN.com, Why Love Heals: How Friendships Keep You Healthy, discusses the findings of a study that examined the correlation between friendship and good health.

“A study of more than 4,000 women and men in Alameda County, California, showed a direct link between the size of one's social circle and survival, with larger circles bringing ever-greater longevity. Women with fewer than six regular contacts outside the house had significantly higher rates of blocked coronary arteries, were more likely to be obese and have diabetes, high blood pressure, and depression, and were two and a half times more likely to die over the course of the study than those with an extensive social network.”

The article goes on to say that both good friendships and a good number of them are associated with good health; a combination of the two is the best prescription of all.

What are your thoughts about why friendship is linked to good health?