Stayin’ Alive

The other day I was doing some light reading — an article published in the PLoS Medicine magazine. (That’s the Public Library of Science Magazine in case you were wondering. What? You weren’t wondering? I just can’t believe that!)

Now, where was I?  Oh, yes.  The article.

The article gave a “short list” of factors that predict a person’s odds of living or dying.  (What.  As opposed to a long list?  Are they afraid that people won’t live long enough to read a long list? Whatever.)

Back to the article.  The one with the short list.

This article reported that social connections (with friends, family, neighbors, and yes, even the pesky co-worker in the cubicle next-door) improve our odds of survival by 50 percent! (Well, that pesky cube-mate might not impact your odds of survival that much.)

The article claimed that low social interaction compares to these widely known risk factors:

• Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day
• Equivalent to being an alcoholic
• More harmful than not exercising
• Twice as harmful as obesity

Whaddy think about them thar statistics, matey?

It’s a good thing that my sweetie and I are practicing at being retired by going places with friends and family.  According to that article, those good feelings I had pulsating through my veins were feelings of love and goodwill from the great social interaction I had.  And I thought it was just cholesterol from the decadent, rich, and high-fat content foods I had consumed . . .

My dear friends, I’m tellin’ ya, my life is in your hands.  You gotta socialize with me.  You just gotta!  If you don’t, you’ll literally take years off my life.  Years that I could spend dancing on the tabletops ’til dawn, swigging Geritol, and eating foods high in fiber instead of lying cold, in my casket, in a grave. I don’t want to die an early death because nobody would come to my house and play.

If people refuse to socialize with me, I might as well stop exercising, put on a few hundred pounds, and take up drinking and smoking.