Better to be fat than to have no friends
If you’re planning on skipping coffee with a friend to throw in an extra sneaky hour at the gym, you might want to reconsider. According to a new study, you’re better off being fat with friends than skinny with none. The team at Brigham Young University in Utah found that people with strong social relationships were a whopping 50 per cent less likely to die early than people without such support.
Having good social relationships involving friends, marriage or children was found to be every bit as important to a healthy lifespan as quitting smoking, losing weight or taking certain medications.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad, the psychologist who led the study, said, "A lack of social relationships was equivalent to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day".
Apparently low levels of social interaction was found equivalent to being an alcoholic, as well as being more harmful than not exercising and twice as harmful as obesity.
Friendships had a bigger impact on premature death than getting an adult vaccine to prevent pneumonia, taking drugs for high blood pressure and also far more important than exposure to air pollution.
"I certainly don't want to downplay these other risk factors because of course they are very important," Holt-Lunstad said. "But we need to start taking social relationships just as seriously."
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