Friends With Benefits

from Lake Norman Woman Magazine October 2022

Looking Your Best When You're Not Feeling Your Best

How our friendships help us manage stress, enjoy life more, and even live longer! fri ds with b ef s

HOW POWERFUL IS FRIENDSHIP? An online article from e New York Times entitled “How to be a Better Friend” points to researchers at the University of Virginia who wanted to nd out whether friendship in uences how we approach the challenges of daily life. “In an unusual experiment,” the article states, “researchers stood at the base of a steep hill (a 26-degree incline) on the university campus and asked 34 students as they walked by to help them in an experiment. Some students were by themselves; others were walking in pairs. Each student was given a backpack lled with weights equal to about 20 percent of their body weight.

“While the students may have had the impression they were going to have to climb the hill, the researchers simply asked them to estimate how steep the climb would be … students standing alone perceived the hill slant as steeper and thought it would be harder to climb while carrying the weighted pack. But students who were standing next to a friend thought the hill looked easier to climb and gave lower estimates of its steepness. Interestingly, the longer the two friends had known each other, the less steep the hill appeared.”

Similarly, there have been other studies that support the notion that friendship helps us cope with stress. When female college students were asked to complete challenging math tasks, their heart rates went up. But when they were asked to complete the math problems with a friend in the room, their heart rates were lower. w

Research suggests that friends can change our view of challenging situations and lower our stress levels. Having that kind of support essentially helps us share the burdens of life—which in and of itself provides health benefi ts, including longevity. Here are a few other friendship facts from The New York Times article:

One study of nearly 3,000 nurses with breast cancer patients found that women without close friends were four times as likely to die from the disease as women with 10 or more friends. Friends can run errands, cook meals, babysit, and provide an array of helpful services that do in fact, literally, lighten the load! People with strong friendships are less likely than others to get sick, perhaps because they have lower stress levels. Researchers have found that certain health behaviors appear to be contagious and that our social networks — in person and online — can infl uence obesity, anxiety, and overall health and happiness.