Want to live a healthier life? Make friends

If your New Year’s resolutions to get fit or eat better are flagging, here is one that’s easier and as vital to your health: spend time with friends.

Social isolation is harmful and raises risks to health like blood pressure and waist circumference, a key report has found.

For example, isolation is as great a risk in adolescents as physical inactivity while in old age it is worse than diabetes for blood pressure.

It may be easy to neglect social arrangements and stay at home to watch the latest TV series, but the report demonstrates a clear link between medical risks and a lack of connections.

Middle adulthood (24 to 65 years old), when people are automatically linked through work and children, is different. In midlife, the support people get for stress and the quality of their social networks seems to matter more than the quantity.

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Proving that relationships do “get under the skin”, researchers from the University of North Carolina analysed data from four large, representative surveys across the US.

Johannesburg cognitive behaviourial psychologist, Colinda Linde, said she had noticed this connection around breast cancer.

“It was a recurrent theme throughout (my doctoral research) that those who had social networks had a better prognosis as well as were more likely to be diagnosed early. They also had multiple sources of support during the various treatments,” she said.

Social connections precede social support which correlates to better physical and mental health, said Linde.

Isolation influences even children's health, said Johannesburg psychologist Joanna Klevoulou.

“Many of my patients as young as five, who present with depression or anxiety, have indicated that their sense of isolation to their world has been a major contributing factor to their condition.”

These children frequently visit medical doctors for conditions like high blood pressure, unexplained bodily pain, migraine headaches, skin conditions such as eczema, as well as gastro-intestinal pain she said.

“Many research studies indicate that isolation is damaging to our physical and mental health,” Klevoulou said.

In Khayelitsha research has found a link between depression and withdrawal from social and family activities, said Thandi Davies from the University of Cape Town’s department of psychiatry and mental health.

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Department head Professor Dan Stein said: “It is important for doctors to assess social isolation in their patients, given the growing research indicating that there is a link between social isolation and physical disease.”

A huge study in 2010 in the US found that people with poor social connections were 50% more likely to die on average in the 7.5 year period after the study. In effect, isolation was about as harmful to their mortality as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

The authors from Brigham Young and North Carolina universities indicated that isolation impacted more than obesity or a lack of exercise on the risk of dying.

In his award-winning new book Being Mortal, doctor Atul Gawande writes: “The terror of sickness and old age is not merely the terror of the losses one is forced to endure but also the terror of isolation.”

Innovative homes for assisted-living which foster connections for frail residents boost their happiness and health, he reports.

This correlates with the 2015 research finding that “socially embedded older adults experience fewer disease risks” like hypertension and obesity. In teenagers it affects inflammation, metabolic and heart health.

Dr Yanga Clare Yang and her co-authors state that developing and maintaining social relationships in these two life stages - adolescence and late adulthood - can be especially critical.

Friendships and support have the potential to stop “the early progression toward chronic diseases and delay disease onset or lessen the disease burden in late life”, the researchers conclude.

sub_head_start WAYS TO CONNECT sub_head_end

• Make a deliberate effort to find and cultivate relationships with people who have common interests with you, and identify those with whom you share values;

• Even if you aren't keen to go out and meet people or it feels daunting, think of the benefits and start small;

• Choose something you already do or have an interest in, or a place where you go often like a church (or another spiritual group), school or work and start connecting there with people with whom you feel comfortable;

• Learn to reach out for help and maintain healthy rewarding friendships; and

• Even owning and caring for a pet is a great way to feel connected.

Sources: Colinda Linde and Joanna Klevoulou, Psych Matters