Think Happy!

I’ve just come across a refreshing article over at The National.

It is not simply your mental health which benefits from a broad network of friends but your physical well-being. There is a big biological pay-off, it seems, to having a strong social circle.

Friends can boost your defences against disease, help you heal, lower your blood pressure, improve your cholesterol and help you live longer in older age, says research.

The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research says, “Social relationships or the relative lack of constitute a major risk factor for health – rivalling the effects of well-established health risk factors such as cigarette smoking, blood pressure, and obesity.”

…Many studies have found that friends – the old-fashioned kind that you talk to on the phone, e-mail, or meet with in person – can improve your immune system.

They help you handle stress by reducing your production of the hormone cortisol, which has a negative effect on your mood and your body’s natural defences.

…The Ohio State University psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, who studies friendship and health, calls social support the most reliable psychological indicator of an improved immune response that has been found.

…For women with breast cancer, social support is associated with a better outcome. Research by the University of California found that socially isolated women had a higher risk of dying after a diagnosis of breast cancer. In a study from Stanford University in the US, women with advanced breast cancer who attended a weekly support group lived twice as long as those who did not.

Another study by the University of California showed that women reacted to stress by producing brain chemicals that actually caused them to make and maintain friendships with other women.

Apparently, when women enjoy a supportive friendship, more of the so-called “love hormone” oxytocin is released, which reduces stress and creates calm. Oxytocin is the hormone linked with attachment, connection, nurturing, bonding, and mothering.

This calming effect is not as effective in men because when men experience stress they produce high levels of testosterone, which reduces the effects of oxytocin rather then promotes it. Oestrogen levels in women enhance oxytocin release.

But both men and women with a strong network of friends live longer, according to an Australian study that followed 1,500 people over the age of 70 for 10 years.

The research showed that having a group of good friends is even more important to living longer than having close family ties.

Friendship. Now there’s a topic we don’t hear enough about.

You can read the full article here.