Friends are one of the great supports of our lives, anyone lucky enough to have them knows what it is, being able to trust someone and knowing that that person can also count on you alleviates problems and gives emotion and intensity to life. But not only that. Science has also shown that friendship has other important benefits.
Good friends don’t need to be perfect or ready to meet all your needs, all they have to do is accept it, take an interest in what’s happening to you, and be ready to listen. Friendship is a simple and excellent gift at the same time.
- “I believe that friendship is more difficult and rarer than love.
- That is why it must be preserved at all costs.
- Alberto Moravia?.
Several studies have shown that having good friends improves our health, both physical and mental, so you know more about these contributions we will talk about the 7 benefits of friendship.
Chronic stress has many causes. However, one of the most common causes is the difficulty of adequately overcoming everyday stress, which occurs when there is a tension between reality as it is and the resources we have to accept and adapt to it.
Friends help us reduce that tension. Simply having a selfless communication space reduces stress, the feeling of support provided by friends reduces anxiety, helping us manage stress and mitigate its consequences.
According to a study published at the National Academy of Sciences, those who have good friends are healthier, which is not surprising if friendship is considered to increase the quality of life.
When someone really cares about you, you increase the level of personal care, on the contrary, the feeling of loneliness often leads to abandonment. If you think no one cares about you, it’s going to be harder to take care of you and it’ll end up affecting your health.
The journal Psychosomatic Medicine published a study on the relationship between physical pain and ailment. It is proven that those who live with loving people perceive pain less intensely.
The same is true if it is not. Single people tend to experience more severe physical pain. Remember that any physical pain causes emotional distress, but those who have friends also have a better emotional disposition, which reduces physical pain.
A study by Duke University in the United States found that those with strong friendships with others enjoy better cardiovascular health; in fact, in this survey, friendship compares to physical exercise and both have positive effects on the heart.
This study was based on a group of 1000 people, all with cardiovascular disease. After five years, half of those who had no friends had died and 85% of those with friends had improved.
In 2010, a group of UK researchers compiled 148 studies on the relationship between emotional ties and mortality. They wanted to compare the different results of these surveys. In total, the analysis covered 300,000 people.
The results were conclusive. In all studies conducted up to this point, there was a clear relationship between loneliness and death. It was obvious that those who had friends had longer lives. Friendship has undeniable effects in this regard.
Although it sounds incredible, science has not yet explained obesity, although genetic, metabolic and psychological factors are known to be involved, the real causes of some cases have not yet been established, in fact, some theories argue that weight gain is a form of defense and increases when the person feels vulnerable.
Research published in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine tries to clarify this point, indicating that friendship is as much an emotional compensation factor as food, who have friends do not need to eat compulsively.
Human interaction is a factor that stimulates the brain. Simply having a conversation with someone or thinking about a different reality than yours stimulates brain activity, while those who remain isolated may lose their cognitive abilities.
For people with some form of mental illness it is more problematic, in fact, one of the triggers of the disease is precisely isolation, and one of the factors that contributes the most to healing is friendship.
Don’t hesitate: having a friend is having a treasure, more than that?When you reach friends, our main task is to learn to be good friends with others. The rest comes too, as we’ve seen, the benefits are immense. In addition, friends bring an extra dose of tenderness to our lives, which is the best antidote to bitterness.