By Joanne A.
There is a lot to be said for lifelong friends. If you found yours very young, they probably know you as well as your parents did. Some you may have known longer than current members of your family like husband, in-laws and children.
With longtime friends, you feel that can let your hair down, be yourself and share your deepest thoughts and feelings. And perhaps it’s that comfortable closeness that makes us feel so good when we are with them.
Today there’s a lot of research that tells us that having lifelong friends can actually help us live longer.
Researchers at the University of Michigan studied 271,053 older adults and found that friendship led to better overall functioning. The second part of the study with 7,481 adults showed that being involved in enjoyable, close friendships related to healthier behaviours, fewer incidences of chronic illness, higher levels of happiness and lower mortality.
Another study highlighted in WebMD from an article in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found that those seniors with the strongest network of friends lived longer than those with a weaker network.
The article goes on to say that the beneficial effects of friendship lasted longer even when faced by adverse events such as the death of a spouse, family member or when friends moved away.
In the United Kingdom, The Daily Mail reported on another study on friends and longevity that supports other research on the subject.
Again, it found that a network of good friends affects behaviours for the better and improves one’s health.
In this study, the Australian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ALSA) at the University of Adelaide showed that contact with children and relatives did little to impact the outlook of seniors. However friendship significantly improves the results of negative changes in a senior’s life.
As in the other studies, they found that friends have good effects on depression, self-efficiency, coping, and morale. The same study showed that we gain a sense of personal control through interaction and engagement with friends.
In their book, “Friendship Matters”, Doctors Sandra Bernstein and Wendy Rappaport call friendship a ‘superpower’. And they’ve been friends for 50 years.
Conversation is the glue, they say, and empathy and regularly being in touch. It is not about the quantity of friends in your network but about intimate intensity and honesty according to Bernstein.
They write that to be a good friend we shouldn’t made assumptions, but keep flexible boundaries and give and get good criticism.
The key ingredients in a good friend according to Bernstein and Rappaport, is someone who’s a good mother to you. Someone who has your back, someone who is really interested to know you and is worthy of your trust.
Dr. Irene Levine’s research at the New York University, School of Medicine supports the findings of these other studies. In different expression she says that good friends support each other and buoy each other up. You feel more solid and secure in yourself because they give you a sense of belonging. In this way they provide an antidote to stress, alienation and loneliness.
What all of these studies prove is that friendship is a pillar of strength to much of what ails us and that maintaining our friendships is important.
So with a little help from our friends, we can look forward to a little more future.
Leave a Comment