Men, Having Friends Is Good for the Heart

Men who have many friends they can turn to for support are significantly less likely to develop heart disease, findings from a new study show.

A group of Swedish investigators found that men with the most social support were about half as likely to develop heart disease as men who had the least social support.

Study author Dr. Annika Rosengren told Reuters Health that these results likely apply to women, as well, since previous research has shown that, among women with heart problems, those who have few quality friends they see on a regular basis tend to have more widespread disease than others.

Although these findings are compelling, the reason why having close friends and staying connected to them might help people's hearts remains a mystery, Rosengren said.

Consequently, the best thing people can do to keep their hearts healthy is still to stop smoking, eat well and get good exercise, the researcher added. "It is unknown whether it would help to get new friends," said Rosengren, who is based at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

During the study, Rosengren and colleagues followed 741 50-year-old men for 15 years, recording their levels of social support and who developed heart disease.

The researchers found that men who showed the highest levels of social integration - meaning they had many quality friends whom they saw on a regular basis - were only 45 percent as likely as men with the least social integration to have heart disease.

Similarly, for men who had the most friends to lean on when needed - a factor known as emotional attachment - the odds of developing heart disease were only 58 percent as high as for men with the least amount of emotional attachment.

Men with more or less social support showed no differences in smoking, exercise habits, body weight, blood pressure and other standard risk factors for heart disease. Also, stress and having a so-called "blue collar" job appeared to have no influence on men's risk of heart problems, according to the European Heart Journal report.

Rosengren noted that further studies are needed to determine why social support appears to influence heart disease, and to investigate the role of other psychological factors such as stress.

SOURCE: European Heart Journal, January 2004.