Friends: a great blessing

Friendship

Friends are probably life’s greatest blessing and one of the most important anti-stress skills is to develop a supportive network of pals.

Research has shown that emotional support can be linked with better brain functions, such as language, memory and mental skills. In a five-year study of heart disease those patients who had no spouse or intimate friends were three times more likely to die than those who had support.

Best of all, friends can make you laugh and one of the most effective ways of dealing with a stressful situation is to find the humour in it. This not only helps you keep the problem in perspective, the very act of laughing can release pain-killing endorphins that make you feel good, as well as building up future resistance to stress.

Researchers at the University of Zurich also found that a friend’s presence may work with hormones in the body to reduce stress.

In the study, men were less stressed either when their best friend was present or when they were given a dose of oxytocin, an anti-stress hormone. In isolation, however, the presence of a best friend was found to be better than oxytocin at reducing stress.