3 tips for connecting with friends and family

Scientific evidence shows that, as you age, company helps keep loneliness at bay, boosts your immune system and increases your sense of well-being, These tips will help you to make the most of your contacts for health and happiness.

The more close friends you have, the greater the odds that you'll be healthy and live longer. Being lonely puts you at risk for an earlier death, high blood pressure, depression and accidents at home and on the road.

Back in the days when we lived in caves, being alone was perilous as no one was around to help fend off marauding wolves or forage for roots and berries if you were sick. Today we’re self-sufficient, but we still need company. If you're alone for too long, levels of the stress hormone cortisol rise which can lead to heart disease, high blood pressure, depression, muddled thinking and sleep problems.

You could say that keeping old friends close and building new connections is becoming a lost art. Research with volunteers has shown that the number of friends the participants felt they could confide in has dropped considerably ever the last few decades.

Today it’s easier to keep in touch with old friends than ever before. Make the effort to keep connections strong and to reconnect with those who you’d like to see again. The thing is that you make a lot of initial contact through social media sites on your computer so you may need to upgrade you skills in order to maintain contact with family and friends and to reconnect with old ones.

Pets help alleviate loneliness and create a long, happy sociable life. In one study of stockbrokers, all of whom took ACE inhibitor drugs for high blood pressure, those who got a cat or dog reduced the size of stress-related spikes in their blood pressure readings by half.

Six months after receiving their pets, study volunteers had their blood pressure measured while they tackled a high-anxiety challenge such as talking their way out of a shoplifting accusation or soothing a client who'd lost a large sum of money  due to the stockbroker's poor advice.

You may not be under physical threat if you are isolated but research shows that we can be more prone to physical decline. These 3 tips will help you rethink your strategy for your social life for health and happiness.