Friendship: It’s good for your health
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2023
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this encore episode of “Post Reports,” we 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.
On this encore episode of “Post Reports,” 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 | Hi there, it's your guest host, Jeff Edgers. |
| 0:04.5 | I know you're probably scrambling around these last few weeks of summer, |
| 0:08.5 | maybe getting the kids off to camp, or perhaps you're on the final days of vacation, |
| 0:13.1 | trying to get some me time before work takes over. |
| 0:16.1 | But let's take a moment to embrace a little of our inner Mr. Rogers |
| 0:19.9 | and think about one thing we often take for granted. |
| 0:24.0 | Friendships. |
| 0:24.9 | They're not just so you can get a ride to the airport, really. |
| 0:29.0 | They actually can benefit our physical and mental health, too. |
| 0:33.7 | So we're bringing you this encore episode about why friendships are so important. Post reports |
| 0:39.6 | host and my friend, Alahi Azadi, will take it from here. |
| 0:45.4 | Hey, Camila. Hi. |
| 0:49.3 | Why don't you know my name? |
| 0:51.8 | This is my friend, Camila. We met six years ago through friends and we hit it off immediately. |
| 0:58.1 | We now do a lot of different things together. Volunteer, work out, talk about spirituality. |
| 1:04.9 | And also the cool thing about both of us is we both have a very distinct laugh. |
| 1:12.8 | Last week we met up to go for a walk, and I asked her about our friendship. |
| 1:16.7 | I know. |
| 1:17.2 | What I will say about our friendship, Alahi came into my life several years ago. |
| 1:22.5 | And she came into it, and I'm never leaving your life. |
| 1:25.8 | What I love about our friendship is we can we can talk about |
| 1:29.4 | everything. Yes, absolutely. And support each other. I just love because when I was younger, |
... |
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