5 Health Benefits of Having Friends

While a recent study has found that having more friends brings about significant health benefits similar to exercise and a healthy diet over the years, other studies shed some light on what good things friendships bring to your overall health.

Friendships might help extend your life and keep you healthy.

A review conducted in 2010 has found that strong social ties have the same health benefit equivalent to quitting smoking, Live Science reported.

University of North Carolina sociologist Yang Claire Yang studied the physiological effects of social ties. She has found that friendships help a person's health through the way the body processes stress. Those who are generally alone, or isolated, usually have problems handling stress compared to those who have friends.

Compared to those who were usually alone and isolated, those who had friends over their whole life had better conditions as well. The same study has found that people who were isolated had twice the risk for high blood pressure compared to those with more friends.

Friends help you go through hard times.

A 1989 study has found that women who were suffering from breast cancer experienced better life conditions and a longer life when they had support groups.

In the same way, a 2014 study found that men with prostate cancer live longer and better when surrounded with a support group as well.

Friendships can last for a long time.

Although various factors might cause you to go away from (or be left by) your friends, a study has found that friendships do last long and physical distance can be overcome.

The study looked into college students in 1983 and found that with the help of communication technologies such as email and chat sites (like today's Facebook), friendships remained 19 years after, seen in a 2002 follow up.

Friendships help you cope with rejection.

While some friendships last long, others are cut short. Good thing is, other friendships will help soften the blow of rejection.

A 2011 study looked into fourth-graders being rejected by their peers and found that when the said children feel the rejection, stress levels rise. However, the researchers found that the effect wasn't as pronounced in those who had more close friends.

Friendships influence you.

Of course, this goes either for good or for bad. However, in this study, the researchers found that a person's health habits can be influenced by his or her friends. This dynamic, which the researchers called “adoption of behavior,” simply means that what a person's friends do, he or she tends to adopt and do as well.