One of the most significant benefits of friendship is how it can play a vital role in maintaining healthy habits. Having solid friendships in our lives can help us make better lifestyle choices that keep us strong – mentally but also even physically.

In his book “Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without”, Tom Rath, alongside several leading researchers, undertook a massive study of friendship concluding that you are five times more likely to eat healthier foods if you have friends who make smart dietary choices, too.

Another study published in the Journal of Social Sciences found that participants gravitate towards the exercise behaviours of those around them – you’re much more likely to exercise if your friends do too.

Journalist Kate Leaver knows how crucial friendship is for maintaining a healthy life – she believes that friendship is the essential cure for anxiety and ill-health and wrote a best-seller on the topic, “The Friendship Cure”.

“If we are an amalgamation of, say, the closest five people in our lives, it makes sense that we would emulate their habits,” she tells us. “This works both ways – we tend to get in on our friends’ healthy habits as well as their less healthy ones. That’s why things like diets can be so contagious – people so often feel like they want to copy the lifestyle choices of the people around them.”