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Men: Drink With Your Friends to Stay Healthy

- Adam Clare

Now there’s the perfect excuse to go watch the game with your friends or just chillax in a bar! It turns out that males really benefit when they engage in face to face activities with their friends twice a week regardless of what they actually do.

So go out tonight with your friends and have a round to your health 😉

Professor Robin Dunbar, a leading psychologist at Oxford University, published the report, which shows that whilst speaking to mates is valuable, it is not enough for men.

He said to experience the real benefits of friendship, men must meet up in the flesh at least twice a week and actually ‘do stuff’.

It also demonstrates men who keep strong and well-maintained social groups are healthier, recover from illness more quickly and tend to be more generous.

No word on if going out every night for beers with friends is even more beneficial.

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Thanks to Shea!

Consumers Care About Social Responsibility

- Adam Clare

I recall early in the last decade that companies didn’t respond to calls for corporate social responsibility because consumers didn’t care. That seems to have changed, which is a very good thing. Since then, corporations have had to accommodate the growing concerns of people and have even gone so far to create new brands that focus on ethical behaviour. The consumer times are changing!

Treatment of employees is the biggest factor (45%) when people decide how responsible a company is. Environmental impact follows close behind (38%). Transparency, corporate oversight, and impact on society are also important factors.

Companies shouldn’t think that the trend towards socially-responsible purchasing means that they can just claim that their products are “green” and call it a day. According to the survey, 63% of people trust company claims about social responsibility only sometimes–when they do verify information, it’s often by reading product packaging, checking out the news, and doing independent research.

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Seniors Who Are Social Are Healthier

- Adam Clare

Seniors who lead active lives like playing cards and generally hanging out with friends feel healthier and are healthier than there less social peers. Friends make things fun and keep you fit!

Dr. Nicole Anderson is a clinical neuropsychologist at Baycrest Health Sciences in Toronto, where she’s leading a research project called BRAVO. It looks at the effects of volunteering among adults aged 55 and older from physical, cognitive and social functioning perspectives.

“Engaging in more social activities was related to better self-reported health and less loneliness and more life satisfaction,” Anderson said of the Statistics Canada research. “But that relationship really depended on whether they felt that those social relations were of high quality. That substantiates the claim that quality is more important than quantity.”

It’s thought that social connectedness helps the immune system to work better, lower stress hormone levels and offers psychological benefits, Anderson said.

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Solitude is for Winners

- Adam Clare

In western culture we often look down on those that want to be alone, indeed, we label them as anti-social. Really, we shouldn’t be doing that. What we should be doing is finding time for ourselves, a time to be alone in solitude.

The power of feeling alone is pretty compelling. So get out there (or stay in) and get some of that much needed alone-time.

One ongoing Harvard study indicates that people form more lasting and accurate memories if they believe they’re experiencing something alone. Another indicates that a certain amount of solitude can make a person more capable of empathy towards others. And while no one would dispute that too much isolation early in life can be unhealthy, a certain amount of solitude has been shown to help teenagers improve their moods and earn good grades in school.

“There’s so much cultural anxiety about isolation in our country that we often fail to appreciate the benefits of solitude,” said Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University whose book “Alone in America,” in which he argues for a reevaluation of solitude, will be published next year. “There is something very liberating for people about being on their own. They’re able to establish some control over the way they spend their time. They’re able to decompress at the end of a busy day in a city…and experience a feeling of freedom.”

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