Having Friends, Socializing Just as Important as Exercise & Diet for Your Health: Study

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It is now time to bring out that Mr. Amiable or Ms. Congeniality in you. A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that having friends or a wider social network and stronger connection with others is just as much significant as exercise and healthy eating are when it comes to a person's health.

The findings of the study, which was published on Friday, Jan. 8 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that those people who do better in terms of socializing at a young age could expect to have better health at different stages of their lives, according to News Wise. 

"Based on these findings, it should be as important to encourage adolescents and young adults to build broad social relationships and social skills for interacting with others as it is to eat wholesome and be physically active," said Kathleen Mullan Harris, James Haar Distinguished Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and faculty fellow at the Carolina Population Center (CPC).

While earlier studies have already indicated that people tend to live longer if they have larger social network, researchers of this particular study said that their findings have shown that this strong social ties of an individual can help in the reduction of health risks in different stages of a man's life, according to a report from NWI Times.

For instance, social isolation among teens could result to a risk for inflammation just as much as physical inactivity does. A strong social network, on the other hand, could help in preventing abdominal obesity. For the elders, social isolation could lead to the development and control of high blood pressure. But, for those in the middle ages, the researchers said that they should look more for the quality in their social ties.

This study was the first study to associate an individual's social relationships with concrete measures of physical well-being such as abdominal obesity, inflammation, and high blood pressure, all of which can lead to long-term health problems, including heart disease, stroke and cancer.

"Our analysis makes it clear that doctors, clinicians, and other health workers should redouble their efforts to help the public understand how important strong social bonds are throughout the course of all of our lives," study co-author Yang Claire Yang, a professor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, said in a news release from the university.