FRIENDS HELP YOU TO LIVE LONGER

Having close friends is an important key a long life.  A number of research studies have shown that having good social networks will help you live longer.  Now a more detailed study shows that it is close friends that are the most important.  One study in Australia looked at people over the age of 70.  Those who reported close friendships and frequent contact with five or more persons were significantly less likely to die in the following decade that those who reported fewer or more distant friends.  Curiously, close ties with one's children or other relatives did not seem to have any effect on longevity.

Exactly why this might be so it's not clear.  Perhaps friends help one to cope with with stress.  And of course family can often be a source of negative stress.  Let's face it, it's often a family that causes stress in one's life.  If stress reduction is the cause of longer life ended having close friends helps in the reduction of stress than finding such friends and staying close is an important goal as we grow older.  Some researchers have concluded that having close friends as a positive physiological effect on our bodies whereas stress has a negative effect.

Although these studies have concentrated on the effect of having close friends, it may well also be that having friends in general is very helpful.  Even making use of such networks as FaceBook and My Space may help to improve our health through the positive physiological effects of friendship.

One of the most important health decisions that you can make maybe to make a positive effort to find and keep friends friends you can talk to friends you can listen to, friends to communicate with when you are happy or when you are sad, friends to enjoy and share your life with .

Making friends in the real world can be quite difficult.  But the payoff is worth the effort.  In the computer world friends are easier to find, but often the friendships are far less strong.  It takes time to turn a casual computer friendship into a more long-lasting friendship.  Interacting with people online will often be very shallow, but there are tricks that you can use to help find friends and ultimately make more long-lasting friends.

First however, look for friends at work, or at school, or from your past life.  People that you do in the past and may have lost contact with may often be found on sites like FaceBook which helps you find people that you may have gone to school with or worked with in the past.  And don't confine yourself only to people who were in your class or with whom you work very closely.  It may well turn out that someone whom you do only vaguely at school or at work nevertheless has similar interests as you and can become a friend, a close friend many years later.

Often one friend will help you find others.  Make sure you make a good use of this introduction.  Online, he many forms and friendship site linked groups of people together who have similar interests.  If you find a to forum or interest group online that is interesting to you, look through it for people you may already know.  Look for people who live close, or the people roughly your age, or for people who share other interests or lifestyles similar to yours.

The active on the forums and sites that you subscribe to.  Such activity will help other people to know and find you and will encourage them to correspond with you.

And of course don't hesitate to use some of the more old-fashioned tricks for making friends.  Join or be active in a local church, or school, or community group of any sort.  Join a volunteer organization helping to teach children, or bringing help to the elderly, were doing some sort of service work in your neighborhood.  All of these things will quickly enlarge your circle of friends, and if you work at it some of them will slowly develop into close friends.

So as part of your health program, start making friends today.