Celebrate love and its benefits for your health!

Did you know that enjoying healthy relationships helps you maintain a better state of health? To celebrate Valentine’s month, we want to tell you about the impact that maintaining healthy relationships and friendships can have on your body and mind. Celebrate love and its benefits!

Reading time: 5 minutes.

According to several studies, many areas of our physical and mental health benefit from having quality relationships with our partners, family, and friends. 

A healthy relationship network:

• Regulates our blood pressure
• Stabilizes our anxiety levels
• Helps us cope better with pain
• Causes us to have less frequent colds
• Allows us to experience faster healing processes
• Improves our overall mental health
• Strengthens our immune system

5 positive effects of healthy relationships

These are some of the benefits of healthy relationships. Some are specific to romantic relationships, although you don’t have to be in a couple to reap the benefits of a healthy relationship with friends or family.

1) Less stress

Being in a healthy relationship is linked to lower production of cortisol, the stress hormone. This suggests that people who are married or in a relationship are less susceptible to stress and that the emotional support that comes with having a partner can be an excellent buffer against negative emotions. There is even evidence to suggest that cohabiting couples are happier than non-cohabiting couples. Our recommendations of the week as another support against anxiety, depression, and chronic fatigue are L-Tyrosine and Titulus Somno.

2) Improved healing and resilience

Whether it’s having someone there to remind us to take our medication or having a partner or friend whose company helps us cope with pain. The research concluded, for example, that married people who have had heart surgery are three times more likely to survive the first three months after surgery than single people. Patients who were married, in a couple, or living with a close family member also reported feeling more confident about their ability to manage post-operative pain and were less worried about the surgery in general. A little emotional support can go a long way in helping a person recover from surgery or illness!

3) Healthier behaviors

Healthy relationships set the perfect tone for an overall healthy lifestyle. If our partner, friends, or other loved ones encourage us to eat healthy, exercise, not smoke, etc., we are likely to follow in their footsteps. It is much easier to adopt healthy behaviors when we surround ourselves with people who do the same.

4) A greater sense of existence

It is natural for humans to want to feel needed and part of something bigger than ourselves. Being in a healthy relationship, whatever the nature, can give a person a sense of well-being and a meaningful existence. 

5) A longer life

Recent research suggests that having healthy social relationships has a greater impact on preventing premature death than taking blood pressure medication. Another study even suggests that a lack of social relationships has the same effect on health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day!

Each person is unique and has their own needs and desires when it comes to relationships, managing stress, and living a healthy and meaningful life. If you’re the type of person who likes to be alone, that’s fine too, but trying to build a close relationship with a partner, good friend or family member could mean remarkable benefits for your mental and physical health.

If you didn’t have Valentine’s Day plans … you already have several reasons to do something special with your partner or friends!