Social Connections Boost Our Longevity

We are living in the epoch of innovative technologies and internet communication, and most of us spend hours chatting with our online friends and buddies, this way reducing the time for real social communication with our close friends and family. A new study of the specialists at Brigham Young University, leaded by Professors Timothy Smith and Julianne Holt-Lunstad suggests that social connections are vital for us and the absence of it can decrease our lifespan up to 50%.

The scientists came to a conclusion that those people who are lacking social relationships and can be as harmfu to our health as alcohol dependence or smoking. According to the findings, a lack of social communication with family, friends and colleagues, can shorten our life almost twice, and the harm visited upon our health from prolonged loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day on a regular basis. It is considered to be twice as harmful as obesity and more harmful than not doing physical exercises at all.

Therefore, the specialists are convinced that social connections and relationships provide us with a high level of protection. “We’ve known that social support does predict mortality for several decades but what’s new about our research is that we’ve summarised 148 medical research studies that now conclusively provide evidence for that finding,” says Timothy Smith. At that, total number of the participants in these researches exceeded 300,000 people. These interesting finding were recently published in the July issue of an online PLoS Medicine magazine.

Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.

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