Alternative Health Blog

What are friends for?

Good health, if you believe the positive studies. Or a not-so-good health effect body and mind considering other research.

On the plus side, researchers have found that staying connected to friends is equal in benefit to maintaining a healthy body weight or not smoking. Australian scientists link friends—not family members--in older years to living longer. 

Research published in the medical journal Cancer showed that women with advanced cases of ovarian cancer who said they felt more social attachment and support had lower levels of harmful interleuken-6 protein in their bodies than patients who reported no such support. An interesting note: Feeling more depressed or anxious didn’t change interleuken-6 levels in either set of women.

Then there are the minuses casting an unhealthy shadow on friends. While connection to pals might be as healthful as staying in good shape, Harvard physician  Nicholas Christakis and University of California-San Diego political science professor James Fowler published a New England Journal of Medicine study in July that countered the argument.  The study offered evidence that friends who become obese can influence close friends to follow in their overweight footsteps. Media outlets jumped on the study and went hard for the “friends will make you fat” headlines.

Christakis himself has answered more than 1,000 emails to say, no, you don't have to drop friends to drop pounds. Fowler, an expert in social networks, has been busy messaging too. Probably because the two researchers used the term “socially contagious” to describe the phenomenon of friends gaining weight together, even if they live thousands of miles apart. In a recent Alternative Health Blog post, we considered an even more recent study by the two researchers showing that even happiness can be “socially contagious.”

To the less appealing point: If a person you consider a close friend become obese (generally described as at least 20 percent over healthy body weight), your chances of becoming obese rise by 57 percent. If the friendship is mutual, the outcome of obesity is even more likely, increasing your chances or risk by 171 percent.

What’s more, the friends effect was even more statistically significant than weight gain among people in the same household or sharing the same genes.

“It’s not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with,” said Christakis. “Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship.”

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.