Now all we need is for our failures of stroke associations to run a clinical study seeing which leg is most important for stroke recovery. I know my social connections while young were few but great, lost almost all the connections during marriage, however now my social connections are great, way too many social connections that sleep is being compromised.
http://www.bustle.com/articles/134175-friendship-has-health-benefits-as-important-as-exercise-diet-according-to-study
Is your email stuffed full of party invites, and are you constantly running to meet up for drinks with all your besties? Social butterflies out there rejoice, because new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has finally proved the health benefits of having friends.
According to the study, the larger a person’s social network at a young
age, the healthier they are early and later in life. While 20 years of
data suggested a positive link between social relationships
and health and longevity, this study is the first to definitively
examine and connect the two. Talk about friends with benefits — health
benefits, that is.
Researchers built their study on the foundation of four nationally
representative surveys of the US population that together tracked the
lifespan from adolescence to the advanced years. The study, published in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined the association between elements of social relationships “social integration, social support,
and social strain” and markers of physical well-being in each stage of
life. They measured C-reactive protein which is a gauge of systemic
inflammation, blood pressure, waist circumference, and BMI — all of
which are important factors in determining mortality risk, and can lead
to heart disease, stroke, and cancer. "We studied the interplay between
social relationships, behavioral factors and physiological
dysregulation that, over time, lead to chronic diseases of aging —
cancer being a prominent example," Yang Claire Yang, a professor at
UNC-Chapel Hill, and co-author of the study. Results showed that the
larger a person's social network in early and late life, the lower the
risk of physical impairment — and conversely, those more isolated were “associated with vastly elevated risk in specific life stages.”
Does this mean you should be concerned if your calendar isn’t
packed to the gills with flitting from hangout to hangout? Thankfully,
if you are in your 20s and 30s, you don't need to have tons of friends
to get the health benefits. The study found that what counts is
friendship quality over quantity in middle adulthood. It is more
important what the relationships provides, than sheer numbers of social
connections. So if your number of Facebook friends is in the low
hundreds — that's totally fine!
However, in adolescents, researchers found that individuals who were
social isolated were at the same risk of inflammation as being
physically inactive. And that is a serious issue, as physical inactivity
is the fourth leading factor for mortality,
according to the World Health Organization. Those who were more
socially integrated had lower risks of obesity. Among the elderly,
social reclusiveness was more harmful than even diabetes on developing
high blood pressure.
Kathleen Mullan Harris, professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and co-author of
the study, stressed the importance of integrating the study's results, "Based on these findings,
it should be as important to encourage adolescents and young adults to
build broad social relationships and social skills for interacting with
others as it is to eat healthy and be physically active."
Perhaps this study could even encourage kids to step away from the computer and go chill with their friends!
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