Not having friends can be as dangerous to health as smoking or drinking too much, concludes a study by U.S. researchers published in the online edition of the journal PLoS Medicine.

Experts say that isolation is bad for your health,besides this is a growing trend in the industrialized world in which “are greatly reducing the quantity and quality of social relations.”

Previous studies have shown that people with fewer social relationships die before than those who interact more with friends.

So worried about the increase of people who are related less to others, discussed how health can affect excessive isolation.

To do this, the researchers turned to 148 previous studies to provide data on mortality of individuals according to their social relations.

After analyzing the data of 308 849 individuals followed for an average of 7.5 years, they found that people with more social relationships are 50 percent more likely to survive than those that are related less to others.

These results also show that considering other effects such as age, sex or health status of the individual, social integration may be another factor to take into account when assessing the mortality risk of the individual.

“Contemporary medicine could benefit from the recognition that social relationships influence health outcomes for adults,” said study leaders, who saw both physicians and educators could inform the importance of social relationships that are promoted as such as antismoking campaigns, a healthy diet and exercise.

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