Not having friends is as dangerous as smoking or excessive drinking

According to a study by U.S. researchers published today in the online edition of the journal PLoS Medicine, “Not having friends can be as dangerous to health as smoking or excessive drinking.”

Practitioners maintain that “isolation is bad for people’s health and unfortunately this is a growing trend in the industrialized world in which they are greatly reducing the quantity and quality of social relations.”

In previous studies researches found that “people with less social relations die before than those who interact more with friends, acquaintances and family.”

Therefore, experts worried by the increase of people who are related less to others, resorted to 148 previous studies to provide data on individuals mortality according to their social relations.

After analyzing the data of 308,849 individuals followed them for an average of 7.5 years, researches found that “people with more social relationships are 50% more likely to survive than those that are related less to the others.”

According to scientists at Brigham Young University (Utah) and the Department of Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina who participated in the study “the importance of having a network of friends and good family relationships is comparable to quitting smoking and exceeds many risk factors of mortality such as obesity, physical inactivity. “

Also they revealed that “considering other effects such as age, sex or health status of the individual, social integration may be another factor to take into account when it’s time for assessing the mortality risk of the individual.”