Family boosts longevity

Yikes. I thought it was friends. Our society is screwed, as we all move further and further away from our families. Dang, I need that tribe!

However, I have to say I have had fun connecting with far-flung relatives this four weeks. I have met probably a dozen or so second cousins on two different branches of my tree. Some people I knew their names, some I didn't know... and I found some aunts and uncles born in the middle of the 19th century, too... and they need a little exploration.

It’s become conventional wisdom that having lots of friends is essential to happiness and longevity. But a new study at the University of Toronto suggests that family bonds are far more important to adult well-being than friendships. Researchers surveyed some 3,000 people between 57 and 85, asking about their closest relationships, health, and well-being, and found that those who felt “extremely close” to several family members had a 6 percent risk of dying within five years. By contrast, people who lacked close family ties had a 14 percent mortality risk over the same period. Even those who weren’t close to their relatives had lower odds of death than people with little or no family. “Because you can choose your friends, you might expect that relationships with friends would be more important for mortality, since you might be better able to customize your friend network,” study author James Iveniuk tells WashingtonPost.com. “But it is the people who in some sense you cannot choose, and who also have little choice about choosing you, who seem to provide the greatest benefit to longevity.”

Taken from the September 9th edition of The Week Magazine.