Health

Most of us enjoy spending time with family and friends and new research from the Brigham Young University shows that having good social networks can improve health and increase your chances of survival.

Social relationships are known to enhance quality of life but they also increase longevity. In fact according to Holt-Lunstad, an associate professor at Brigham Young, social contact could be just as important as other factors affecting health such as alcohol consumption and obesity.

During the seven and a half year research, 148 studies were conducted that tracked social relationships and  how they impacted on life span. Over 300,000 participants were involved in the study.

Professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad said “Those who scored higher on those measures of social relationships were 50 percent more likely to be alive at that follow-up than people who scored low on those measures,” and says that personal relationships should be considered as a major health factor.