A
healthy social life may be as good for your long-term health as avoiding
cigarettes, according to a massive research review released Tuesday by the
journal PLoS Medicine.
Researchers
at Brigham Young University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
pooled data from 148 studies on health outcomes and social relationships —
every research paper on the topic they could find, involving more than 300,000
men and women across the developed world — and found that those with poor
social connections had on average 50% higher odds of death in the study's
follow-up period (an average of 7.5 years) than people with more robust social
ties.
That
boost in longevity is about as large as the mortality difference observed
between smokers and nonsmokers, the study's authors say. And it's larger than
differences in the risk of death associated with many other well-known
lifestyle factors, including lack of exercise and obesity. "This is not
just a few studies here and there," says Julianne Holt-Lunstad, lead
author on the review and an associate professor of psychology at Brigham Young
University. "I'm hoping there will be recognition from the medical
community, the public-health community and even the general public about the
importance of this."
The
friend effect did not appear to vary by sex or by age, with men and women of
all ages and health statuses showing roughly equal benefit. Nor were lonely
people unusually susceptible to any one disease in particular.
But
if it's true that we get by with a little help from our friends, then how,
exactly, do our friends do it? That is, how does "social integration"
— measured by surveys and questionnaires about friends, family size, marital
status and the number of household residents — influence long life? The short
answer is that we don't really know yet. "The truth of the matter is that
the critical evidence on psychosocial processes and health have come about only
within the last 10 to 15 years — even though there's been a lot of theory on it
since the 1970s," says psychology professor Bert Uchino at the University
of Utah.
