Strong Social Connection Is Key To Longevity

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Friends are great for making us laugh, sharing our struggles, and calling us out when we need a reality check, but could they also be the secret to living a long and healthy life?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi-Johnson and Noah Michelson, the hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — discovered when psychologist and University of Maryland professor Marisa Franco dropped by our studio to talk about the secrets of making friends as an adult.

Listen to the full episode by pressing play:

“When we feel connected, we release oxytocin. Oxytocin makes us happy, but it’s also considered the fountain of youth,” Franco explained. “That is why, for example, when we look at how much our diet affects our longevity, [how much] exercise affects our longevity, [we see] having a large diverse social network increases our longevity more than both of those things almost combined. … I think in our society, we have focused on so many different aspects of health that are important, but social connection should be at the top of our list.”

Michelson noted, “When you go to the doctor, they ask, ‘Do you work out? Are you smoking?’ They never say, ‘How many friends do you have?’ or ‘How much time are you spending with other people?’ and they probably should be.”

Franco agreed, citing studies that show feeling lonely can make a cold feel worse and the antibody response in vaccines can be lower if we don’t have strong social connections.

So how do we get more friends in our lives, especially when finding folks to hang out with can be exponentially more difficult as we get older?

“Probably the first thing I would suggest — the lowest-hanging fruit — is to reconnect with people that you’ve fallen out of touch with,” Franco said. “Research finds that every seven years we lose about half of our friends, and that is not because we hate each other [or] there’s conflict — it’s just life happens.”

Rekindling those old relationships could be as simple as digging through our texts.

“Is there someone you were texting? Scroll through your texts from this time last year [and see if there’s someone] that you can say, ‘Hey! How’ve you been? It’s been a while. I’ve been meaning to reach out,’ or ‘I was just thinking about that time we did x, y, and z — how have you been?’”

Franco explained that reconnecting with old friends is especially powerful because we already have trust established with them, and because research finds that people underestimate how much someone might value us popping back into their life.

“Sometimes you think, ‘Oh, they’ve already moved on,’ [but] people tend to be very happy to receive that reach-out,” she said.

Franco offered us a ton of other ideas about where to meet new people and how to deepen our burgeoning friendships, including how switching up the location of a meetup can revolutionize a growing connection and the one place you might want to avoid looking for friends.

Listen to the full episode above or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also watch the new episode by visiting YouTube.

For more from Franco, visit her website and follow her on Instagram @DrMarisaGFranco.

Have a question or need some help with something you’ve been doing wrong? Email us at Am*************@******st.com” data-vars-item-type=”text” data-vars-unit-name=”6957ed9fe4b0ee8ef98bd20d” data-vars-unit-type=”buzz_body” data-vars-target-content-id=”https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mailto:Am*************@******st.com” data-original-string=”tCsNA/6LV/+obBQ3bJtitg==6f6nuag+A5NhS6pQcDn0hK57oyOYD6xhhcQ/6BzDENI7Ao=” title=”This contact has been encoded by Anti-Spam by CleanTalk. Click to decode. To finish the decoding make sure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser.” data-vars-target-content-type=”url” data-vars-type=”web_external_link” data-vars-subunit-name=”article_body” data-vars-subunit-type=”component” data-vars-position-in-subunit=”23″>Am*************@******st.com, and we might investigate the topic in an upcoming episode.