The Biggest threat to Your Health That You Didn’t Know About

And now think about one thing you can do to make yourself healthier. I bet you thought about changing your diet or exercising regularly or losing weight. Eating well and exercise does make you healthy, but there’s something even more powerful.

What if I told you there was something worse for your health than smoking or drinking excessively or not exercising? What if I told you there was something much simpler you could do to keep yourself healthy?

The most important action you can take to keep yourself healthy is to have friends.

Loneliness is the biggest single threat to your health. Study after study shows that people who report that they feel lonely have higher rates of high blood pressure, heart attacks, heart failure, strokes, chronic back pain, depression, addictions, and cancer. And cancer patients who report being lonely have longer treatment courses and poorer outcomes.

Having a network of friends even protects you from the common cold.

Overall, being lonely is more harmful to a person’s health than smoking, or excessive alcohol consumption, or being obese, or not getting enough exercise, or exposure to pollution.

A meta-analysis of 148 studies which involving more than 300,000 people concluded that people with strong social relationships have a 50% increased likelihood of survival than those with weak social relationships.

Bottom line: loneliness kills. Friendship is good medicine.

And the amazing thing about friendship is that two (or more!) people get the health benefits.

So the next time you think about doing something to make yourself healthier, reach out to a friend. You’ll do something healthy for yourself, and for someone else.