Relationships: The buddy beautiful
Friends can be good for your physical as well as your emotional wellbeingAristotle defined a friend as "a single soul dwelling in two bodies". Members of Facebook whose "friends" reach triple figures may have a looser definition, but how many friends we have, and how easily we make, maintain and lose them, has a significant impact on our emotional wellbeing.It's no surprise, then, that friends can improve just about every aspect of our life. Recovery from a major operation? Tick, says a 2009 study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, an organisation not known for touchy-feely nonsense. This recovery included, incredibly, a reduction in the level of pain felt by patients with the most friends. Likewise, friends can protect us (a bit) from the aftershocks of bereavement, divorce, even the onset of dementia. They don't even have to be great friends – some of the positive effect is simply down...
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