This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

And then see if you can begin to deepen your breath here,

nice long inhale in, and a nice long juicy exhale out.

There are some commonly accepted ideas about what it means to be healthy.

Healthy people eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

They don't do drugs, and of course they exercise.

Draw your palms together at the heart, take a deep breath in.

Each time we get here, we're doing a good thing.

While physical activity and food dominate our discussions about well-being,

the importance of social interaction is often overlooked.

I think the movie was better than the book.

I'm alright. What's your horse go?

I like a large, long time no see.

There's a large, ongoing body of research about how critical social contact is to human survival.

That awful looks so good on you, where do you go to?

A University of Utah study showed that people with strong relationships have lower blood pressure than lonely counterparts.

What time is it? It's time for you to get a watch.

A huge carelessness. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that people who reports strong feelings of loneliness

are more likely to binge eat.

That plays as the best of it.

That plays as the worst.

And at Harvard, one study found that people with good relationships actually live longer and live happier.

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