Why your friends make you live longer

Loneliness kills

Before we examine what friendship can do for us, it is worth bearing in mind how a lack of it can impact us. Loneliness or perceived loneliness can lead to a shortened lifespan through many routes, one of which is cardiovascular disease. Lonely individuals have roughly 30% increases in the risk of both heart disease and stroke each. Not to mention that those already living with heart disease have a worse prognosis if they are lonely.

Cognitive decline is another problem. Women over the age of 80 have higher rates of dementia than men, and lack of social support can make it more difficult to deal with the cognitive impairment in early dementia. Feeling lonely and social isolation also increases chronic stress, in turn driving up inflammation, blood pressure, and make the immune system dysfunctional which undoubtedly carries risk for developing other diseases as well.

Psychologically, loneliness can be very worrying and leave people feeling immobilized and demoralised. They may not have any active coping mechanisms and may partake in health risk behaviours such as a sedentary lifestyle, smoking and drinking, further elevating their disease risk.

Friendship aids survival

Turning to just how effective friendships and social communication is, a meta-analysis of 148 studies reveal that those with stronger social relationships have an increased lifespan. The study also revealed that there were many aspects of social life, such as quality of relationships and quantity of relationships rather than just one measure e.g. living alone or not, were a better predictor of lifespan.

Handling stress

Stress causes inflammation and other physiological changes such as activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary) axis. Chronically this has detrimental effects such as obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and atrophy of the brain to name a few.

Talking to someone about your problems may shed light on alternative ways of thinking to help with anxiety. Try to connect with your friends who are supportive and give you comfort. Engagement in healthy behaviors with friends who are a good influence may help you stick to helpful behaviors such as exercising, cooking healthy food, cutting back on drinking or smoking, so when a stressful situation rocks your boat you are prepared to overcome it.

Building your brain

Talking to others rewires your brain with new thoughts and perspectives and stimulates your thinking. As a result, those people with stronger social connections exhibit better cognition and memory.

An evolutionary hypothesis, the ‘Social Brain hypothesis’ posits that humans evolved disproportionately larger brain-to-body size in order to cope with the increased demands of social life. Those that have a larger online social network size show increases in the grey matter density of the temporal regions of the brain involved in social perception and memory. Furthermore, real-world social network size was also associated with the size of the amygdala, which is involved in the processing of emotions.

An important point is that a lack of social connection can lead to reduced network formation in your brain which may mean you are less well equipped to handle social interactions and tend to avoid them, resulting in a downward spiral. Therefore to reverse this situation into an upwards spiral we have some tips for you below.

What to do

There are so many ways to reach out to others, either cultivating new relationships or reinforcing existing ones. Reach out to a loved one for coffee or dinner. A quick phone call to a friend will help dispel your life’s troubles. Join a club, class or team. Expand your horizon to anything from exercise to arts and crafts. You can also volunteer and aid others in your local community. 80% of centenarians surveyed in a study report the importance of family, friends and participating in the community regardless of their background.

Remember that friendship offers mutual benefit for you to live longer and your friends to live longer. Be proactive and take the first step to talk to someone you’ve missed.