“Friendship is so familiar that we think we know all about it, but we don’t fully appreciate it.”
It’s a quote from an interview from NPR with Lydia Denworth, scientific journalist and author of the book, Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond. Recent studies conducted by Denworth have pointed to the powerful influence that a bond with another person can have on our lives.
When it comes to our overall health, there are few givens. We know that we should eat well-rounded meals, exercise daily, get more sleep and drink more water. These are obvious behaviors that greatly impact our physical health, but how does social connection factor into all this?
We know that having a good group of friends close by does wonders for our mental health—friends are there for us when we need to vent about our problems, and friends are there for us to be shoulders to cry on. However, new studies have shown that keeping close friendships also plays a vital role in keeping us physically healthy as well—all the way from our immune systems to our cardiovascular health. According to Denworth, having these bonds with others in your life affects more than just your weekend plans—she refers to the idea as “an evolutionary drive to connect.”
Many different studies have been conducted wherein it becomes apparent that a lack of sturdy friendships takes its toll on the human body. According to Time, an ongoing study from Harvard shows that, in 724 different men, those that do not have substantial relationships have proven to have poorer health earlier in life and seem to be much less happy than their counterparts that did have good friendships. Closer friendships with others have proven to result in lower levels of self-reported stress and higher levels of happiness—two factors that have significant influence on our health.
Denworth’s study and other ones like it all support the same idea: your best friends are saving your life. It’s a valuable piece of news, especially considering current conversations on the importance of mental health, because it helps contextualize how important our ability to connect with others is in the grander scheme of things. Friends help keep our minds in check, but they also help keep our bodies in check, too.
Even more surprising, or perhaps the opposite, is Denworth’s statements that social media in today’s society has an overall positive effect on people’s abilities to maintain close bonds and friendships. This seems to counter the oft-held belief that social media and Internet culture have been detrimental to our abilities to truly connect with other people in real life settings. “We know who our really good friends are,” Denworth tells NPR, “whether we’re online with them or offline.”
So, what does all this mean for us? In short, perhaps it’s a suggestion to call up that friend you’ve been meaning to grab lunch with. Denworth states it simply: “I think it’s healthy to be reminded that time with other people really matters.”
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