Good friends contribute to your health and well-being

Spending time with friends is fun, but it may also yield a multitude of long-term physical and emotional healthbenefits. Studies show that healthy relationships make aging more enjoyable, lessen grief, and provide camaraderie to help you reach personal goals, among other things. Maintaining positive relationships should rank up there with healthy eating and exercise as a necessary investment in your health.

Friends and Well-Being

A number of studies have highlighted the importance of friends and good relationships to health, Here are some of the findings:

• Socially engaged adults age more successfully. According to surveys of women over age 60, those who are socially engaged and visit with friends and family throughout the week are happier as they age.
• Friends can help you achieve your weight and fitness goals. Encouragement and just sharing goes a long way to boosting your willpower.
• Happiness is catching. If you have a friend you consider to be happy, you are more likely to be happy and you are able to spread that happiness to the people around you. A study of 4,739 adults who participated in the Framingham Heart Study between 1983 and 2003 showed that people tend to cluster into happy or unhappy groups, and happiness appears to spread not just to those immediately inside the social group, but to their contacts as well. Having happy friends who live less than a mile away was an especially powerful predictor of happiness.
• Building a circle of friends makes you happy. People who see themselves as a leader in their social circle are happier than those who see themselves as outsiders — another reason why actively building relationships instead of waiting for the phone to ring is important.
• Friends lessen grief. A series of interviews with parents who lost a baby during pregnancy or immediately after birth showed that those who felt they were receiving social support from friends or family were better able to cope with their grief. The most welcome forms of support were simply being physically present, listening, and offering sympathy, encouragement, and practical help, such as making meals or funeral arrangements. In contrast, feeling socially alone tends to worsen grief.
• Being social boosts your immune system. Being socially engaged leads to more positive emotions, which in turn may actually boost your body’s immune system and reduce the physical signs of stress, say health experts.

The Friends You Choose Make a Difference

While it is possible for one happy person to spread happiness to their friends, the reverse is also true — a mildly or chronically depressed friend can bring you down as well. It helps to have a diverse group of friends to lessen this impact.

It's also important to be a good friend yourself, providing others with as many of the benefits of friendship (infectious happiness, social support, someone to confide in, food in times of crisis) as you can. It feels good to help others, and that only adds to your own happiness.

By Madeline Vann, MPH

Medically reviewed by Pat F. Bass III, MD, MPH

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