Friendship: It’s good for your health
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2023
⏱️ 19 minutes
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Summary
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It’s time to rethink our friendships. Research shows that strong friendships are essential to a healthy life.
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Have you ever neglected your friendships for romantic love? It may be time to rethink your priorities.
A growing body of research shows that friends are essential to a healthy life. Cultivating strong friendships may be just as important for our well-being as healthy eating habits or a good night’s sleep. Platonic love may even be more important than romantic love.
People with strong friendships tend to have better mental health, and there may be benefits to our physical health, as well. Large social networks lower our risk of premature death more than exercise or dieting alone, research found.
Teddy Amenabar reports for the Well+Being section at The Washington Post and walks us through these findings and offers advice for how to maintain our friendships.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey Camilla. |
| 0:04.0 | Hi. |
| 0:07.0 | Why are you running? |
| 0:09.0 | This is my friend Camilla. |
| 0:11.0 | We met six years ago through friends and we hit it off immediately. |
| 0:15.0 | We now do a lot of different things together. |
| 0:18.0 | Volunteer, workout, talk about spirituality. |
| 0:21.0 | And also the cool thing about both of us is we both have a very distinct laugh. |
| 0:28.0 | Last week we met up to go for a walk and I asked her about our friendship. |
| 0:34.0 | What I will say about our friendship a lot I gave into my life several years ago. |
| 0:39.0 | And she came into it and I'm never leaving your life. |
| 0:43.0 | What I love about our friendship is we can talk about everything. |
| 0:47.0 | Yes, absolutely. |
| 0:49.0 | And support each other. |
| 0:50.0 | I just love because when I was younger I didn't really have a lot. |
| 0:53.0 | I obviously have friends but I didn't have that spiritual connection with my friends. |
| 0:57.0 | We're always like just trying to talk about why are we here in the purpose of life. |
| 1:01.0 | It's like what I always want to talk about. |
| 1:04.0 | And then also like how you work out. |
| 1:07.0 | All Camilla, feelings mutual. |
| 1:11.0 | It's a tribe. |
| 1:13.0 | I love the tribe. |
... |
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