The FDA-approved drug Chantix may be causing more problems by producing adverse side effects like aggression, experts say.

Smoking cessation is a big problem for dependent smokers. Withdrawal symptoms and nicotine cravings are two of the top reasons why many cannot stop smoking.

A few years ago, the US FDA approved a drug, Chantix, that was touted as the prescription drug to help people kick the smoking habit.  According the drug’s medical literature, Chantix works by acting on the specific brain receptors associated with the chemical nicotine.

Nicotine is an active ingredient in tobacco products that produces a feeling of well-being and relief.  In the long term, the body loses its ability to produce similar chemicals that provide stress relief and the feeling of satisfaction.

This is the reason why smokers become dependent on tobacco products.  It is possible to normalize the brain chemical production again, but it takes time and the withdrawal symptoms are painful.

The story of Chantix

When a smoker is prescribed Chantix to help kick the smoking habit, he can continue smoking until the 8th day of active treatment.  After this point in time, the patient must stop smoking so the drug can perform in its full capacity.  A patient can be prescribed the drug from 12 to 24 full weeks.

According to researcher Thomas Moore from the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, Chantix is actually a dangerous drug because it causes patients to feel aggression, violence and even suicidal thoughts.

Moore states that there should be regulation in the prescription of the drug.  According to him, military personnel and other similar armed professionals should not be given the drug given the adverse reports of its side effects since its approval in 2006.

The first documented, adverse side effect of the drug was made in the year 2007 when a musician from Dallas was shot down for displaying violent behavior toward his girlfriend’s neighbor.

Moore and fellow researchers were able to gather a total of 78 adverse cases of side effects from various sources, including reports sent to the US FDA.  Among the 78 adverse side effects, the researchers noted that ten cases involved serious assault, nine cases involved thoughts of committing homicide and seven cases involved other types of violent thoughts.  The FDA advises anyone on the drug Chantix to stop treatment if such feelings of aggression manifest during treatment.  It is also advised that you visit your physician if ever such side effects do occur during treatment.

Natural smoking cessation strategies

You don’t have to be dependent on smoking cessating drugs like Chantix or nicotine patches to kick the smoking habit.  Below are natural strategies that can help you quit the habit.  But the most important tool in your arsenal will still be the genuine desire to quit smoking because you want your health back.

1. A common withdrawal symptom when a person stops smoking is hunger.  This hunger is in part psychological and part physiological.  The body is sending out a signal that it needs its next dose of nicotine.  The body doesn’t need nicotine because it can produce its own natural chemicals to reward the body after a hard day’s work.  If you feel hungry after quitting smoking for a few hours, try drinking some water or eating a small, healthy snack.  Avoid over-eating though, as this doesn’t help the overall effort of keeping yourself healthy throughout the quitting process.

2. Deal with the emotional stress associated with smoking properly.  The first step is to reach out to those who are closest to you, like friends and loved ones.  It’s okay to tell them that you feel angry or frustrated.  Listen to them and allow them to provide you comfort and emotional relief.  Also, learn how to de-stress properly. Remove yourself form isolation, start exercising and keep yourself busy with doing something you like.

3. Reach out to other people like you who are also attempting to kick the habit for good.  Online forums on smoking cessation are free of charge and are full of folks who are in various stages of quitting.  Simply joining the forums can provide immense benefits because you can heart their stories and you will not feel as if you are loneliest person in the world.

4. Do you feel fatigued or physically tired because you’ve quit smoking?  Instead of getting a cigarette, try resting. If you need to adjust your bedtime to sleep earlier, then that’s a good idea. Sleep is much better than bringing yourself back to square 1 of your efforts.

5. Gradually reduce your number of cigarette sticks per day. Start with small steps and gradually reduce your tobacco consumption by half.   Then halve your current number of sticks again, until you’re down to two or one stick a day.  By doing this, you are giving your body time to readjust its chemical balance.  Going cold turkey rarely works, especially for first-time ‘quitters’.

Sources:
webmd.com
quitsmoking.about.com
quitsmoking.about.com

Exposure to secondhand smoke produces psychological stress and predisposes individuals to a higher risk of being hospitalized due to psychiatric illnesses.

In a study performed by researchers from the University College London, it was found that individuals who were exposed to secondhand smoke were more likely to suffer from psychological distress than people who were not exposed. The risk of psychological distress from secondhand smoke exposure is a staggering 50% – a significant risk percentage.

In addition to psychological stress, it was also found that people who regularly inhaled other people’s smoke were 3 times more likely to be admitted to a psychiatric facility in less than 7 years.  Smokers on the other hand, are four times more likely to be hospitalized due to psychological distress and other psychiatric problems.

The dangers of passive smoking

The researchers were able to measure the degree of a person’s exposure to nicotine by marking and measuring the compound cotinine, which is the chemical byproduct of nicotine after it has been metabolized/processed by the body.  The compound cotinine can be found in a person’s saliva.  The UK study tracked more than 5,000 smokers and 2,000+ non-smokers; all respondents of the study had no prior history of mental illnesses.

Within six years of the study, forty-one individuals from both the groups were admitted to a psychiatric facility.  More than fourteen percent of all the subjects of the UK study reported some degree of psychological stress.  After filters were applied, the researchers stated that despite differences in social circumstance, the risk factors still applied to both smoker and non-smokers. The study made use of a general questionnaire, which allowed the researchers to measure the exposure of secondhand smoke.

Based on the study, “passive smoking” or mere exposure to secondhand smoke increases  a person’s risk for psychological stress by more sixty percent. Prior to the more recent UK study, earlier animal studies showed that tobacco can alter an animal’s mood, which suggested a link between tobacco use and clinical depression in humans.

Tobacco: a poor stress reliever

This study shows that tobacco use is not a good coping strategy – instead of providing stress relief, it actually produces psychological stress. In a study published by the Journal of Pediatric Psychology (Oxford University Press) it was found that younger individuals are more prone to using tobacco as a coping strategy against stress.  It was found that smoking did not provide any significant stress relief to the respondents.

Sources:
reuters.com
archpsyc.ama-assn.org
jpepsy.oxfordjournals.org

Smoking cessation plus exercise can improve the male sexual function and also improve the urinary health of both males and females.

In a recently concluded study presented in the annual conference of the American Urological Association, researchers pointed to a vital link between smoking, exercise and urinary health.

The study involved two thousand individuals (males and females). The respondents were interviewed about their smoking habits and were also given questions regarding their urinary health.  It was found that individuals who smoked were three times more likely to urinate frequently.

Also, these individuals are also 2.7 times more prone to experience sudden urges to go to the bathroom to urinate.

In a related study performed by US researchers from South Carolina, it was found that men who exercised more had experienced improved sexual function.  The two studies, if taken together, point to an age-old medical adage: folks have to stop the smoking habit and begin a healthier habit – exercise!

More reasons to love exercise

Here are even more reasons to love exercise:

1. Exercise reduces the risk of mortality from chornic, degenerative health conditions.

2. Exercise reduces the chance of developing of type 2 or insulin-dependent diabetes.

3. Exercise can help control the blood pressure, even the blood pressure of people already have cardiovascular problems.

4. Exercise can help reduce the probability of developing one of the top killers worldwide: colon cancer.

5. Exercise helps improve your mood and also helps people ease out of anxiety and depression.

6. Exercise improves balance, coordination and also strengthens the bones and muscles, therey reducing the risk of fractures from falls.

7. Exercise is also an excellent means of losing weight.

8. Exercise make the body and mind more fit. If you are physically and mentally fit, you would be able to perform better at work or in school.

9. Exercise reduces the risk of stroke.

Exercise may also reduce the risk of breast cancer and loss of bone mass (osteoporosis) – two common problems of women over the age of 45.

Sources:
aolhealth.com
nutristrategy.com
www2.gsu.edu
medicinenet.com

IQ scores of cigarette smokers tend to be lower than non-smokers'.

With all that we now know about the negative health effects of smoking (e.g., compared with non-smokers, smokers are four more times more likely to suffer a stroke, four times more likely to have heart disease, 23 times more likely to develop lung cancer, 13 times more likely to die from lung disease, etc.), you really have to question the intelligence of people who start smoking.

Well, we now have a study that may answer that question.

According to a new study published in the journal Addiction, smokers tend to have lower IQs than non-smokers.

Researchers discovered this through a study that tested the intelligence level of 20,000 Israeli soldiers and recruits.  The overwhelming majority of the 18-year-olds had never smoked in their lives (68 percent), but more than a quarter of them were regular smokers (about 28 percent).  Three percent of them were classified as “ex-smokers.”

After controlling for contributing factors that no doubt influenced the soldiers’ IQ scores (e.g. years of schooling they’d completed, how many years of school their parent had completed), they found that smokers had lower scores than non-smokers (smokers average IQ score=94; non-smokers average IQ score=101).  What’s more, there was an inverse relationship between cigarettes smoked and their IQ scores.  In other words, the more cigarettes smoked per day, the lower their score were.

Now, again, there are a lot of contributing factors to consider in assessing someone’s intelligence.  Further, an IQ test is not exactly a foolproof (pardon the pun) way of measuring someone’s intelligence.  That being said, it’s the best thing we have that gives a snap shot assessment of someone’s mental acuity.

A question that remains unanswered, however, is whether smoking leads to lower IQ scores, or if less intelligent people are just more likely to smoke.  Despite the inverse relationship between IQ and cigarettes smoked per day, the researchers think it’s the latter.

Be that as it may, if you do smoke, the smartest thing you can do is to quit…and quit now.  The withdrawal symptoms you’ll no doubt experience will probably make this process the hardest thing you’ve ever done, but the benefits far outweigh the negatives.  You’ll notice an improvement in your breathing within a week.  Within 24 hours, your blood pressure rate will normalize.  And in a matter of days, smells and flavors will become more distinct.

As you work on quitting—and there are LOADS of smoking cessation programs to choose from—you’ll want to supply your body with key nutrients that you’re likely deficient in.  For that and more, check out this.

Sources:
newsmaxhealth.com
cdc.gov

For women that can't (or won't) stop smoking, beta carotene may reduce their risk for breast cancer.

There are so many reasons not to smoke.  From the yellowish-green hue it leaves on your teeth, the smell it leaves on your breath, the aging it does to your skin, the negative health effects are hardly hard to spot.

Yet as long as the list of negative physical effects are, it pales in comparison to the negative health effects of cancer.

Smoking increases your risk for cancer more than any other behavior.  Lung cancer, the most prevalent cancer of them all, is almost entirely attributable to smoking, whether that smoke is inhaled directly from a cigarette or second hand.  It’s the cause of 90 percent of lung cancer deaths in men and 80 percent of lung cancer deaths in women.  And if you compare people’s risk for lung cancer based on whether or not they smoke, the smoker is 23 times more likely to develop lung cancer than the non-smoker.

Lung cancer isn’t the only cancer risk that increases with smoking.  A 2005 study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center found that cigarettes increased a woman’s risk for breast cancer by 40 percent (compared to those who never smoked).

Of course, the best way to avoid this risk is to stop smoking.  But for those who can’t—or won’t—stop smoking, there are some nutrients that may reduce their risk for breast cancer.

According to a new study published in the European Journal of Cancer, a woman that can’t—or won’t—quit smoking can decrease her risk for breast cancer by increasing her beta-carotene intake.

The study followed over 36,600 women for 10 years and they found that women that consumed the highest amount of beta-carotene were about 60 percent less likely to develop breast cancer among fellow female smokers that were comparatively low in beta-carotene.

Further study hopes to determine whether increasing beta-carotene among non-smoking women can similarly decrease breast cancer risk.  If so, then researchers can look into supplementation amounts, or how much beta-carotene is needed to decrease breast cancer risk among both non-smoking and smoking women.

In the meantime, there are lots of great supplements for beta-carotene.  You’ll typically find them paired with vitamin A, as beta-carotene is converted into vitamin A in the body.  Consumer Lab gives the green light to several beta-carotene supplements, including Nature’s Way Beta Carotene, Puritan’s Pride Beta-Carotene, and Vitamin Shoppe’s Beta-Carotene.  Each supplement contains 25,000 international units of beta-carotene per capsule.

You can also go to food sources for beta-carotene.  Deep-colored vegetables are the best sources.  By “deep-colored” I mean vegetables that are intensely one particular color, like spinach is green and carrots and sweet potatoes are orange.

Make sure that they’re fresh sources, too, as the bioavailability of beta-carotene is higher in fresh vegetables compared to canned or frozen (fresh carrots contain 100 percent all-trans beta-carotene, but in canned carrots, that amount goes down to 73 percent).

Sources:
nutraingredients.com
quitsmoking.about.com
foxnews.com
whfoods.com

2009 was a banner year for the tobacco industry. Perhaps this latest study regarding tobacco's negative health effects will make 2010 their worst year yet.

If you hate smoking as much as I do, the year 2009 couldn’t come to an end soon enough.  That’s because 2009 was a banner year for the cigarette industry.

As I recently reported on Natural News, smoking in the year 2009 made a bit of a comeback.  Unlike 2008, when the rate of smoking in the country hit an historic low, the smoking rate increased.

Now, granted, the increase wasn’t significant (from 20 percent to 21 percent) but with all we know about the negative health effects of tobacco, why would people even consider starting?

Here’s the latest example of why it’s such a mystery.

According to a recently published report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, children who are exposed to tobacco smoke either in the womb or during the first stages of life are more likely to develop an array of behavioral problems by the time they reach fourth grade.

The study involved the questioning of the mothers of 6,000 children.  It was a carefully questioned questionnaire that tried to eliminate as many potential biases and circumstances that can influence a child’s social development.  Simon Ruckinger, the study’s lead author from the University of Munich, made it a point of emphasizing this fact.

Based on the mothers’ responses of their children’s social health and whether or not they smoked during pregnancy and/or after giving birth (or whether they smoked at all), children were almost two times more likely to have a social interaction disorder.  This was true for the women who smoked during pregnancy; the rate was only slightly lower for women who smoked during the child’s first years of life.  For them, the rate of behavioral problems in kids was approximately 1.3 times higher compared to non-smokers.

The physical development risks tobacco exposes babies to are well-documented, but this is one of the first studies to firmly establish the link between antisocial behavior and tobacco exposure.

Hopefully this finding will lead the estimated 15 percent of women—15 percent!—to think twice before lighting up.

But as with any addiction, smoking is very difficult to stop, even when the health consequences are so apparent.  The brain knows that it’s bad for you, but the tobacco-addicted mind can’t quite make the connection.

There’s no shortage of ways to kick the habit, but as you work at, it’s advisable to take some herbs and supplements that help cleanse the body of the toll tobacco puts on the body.  This is especially important if you’re pregnant!

Cayenne, the spicy ingredient found in chili and jalapeno peppers, often induces perspiration.  Perspiration naturally cleanses the body of toxins.  Another natural “perspirant-inducer” is ginger.

And as far as cleansing your blood of toxins, burdock root and red clover help with this.  The principle use of burdock root is for blood detoxification, in fact.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
weblogs.baltimoresun.com
naturalherbsguide.com
Balch, Phyllis.  “Prescription for Nutritional Healing.”  4^th Ed.  2006.  New York:  Avery

If you have asthma and smoke, you can reverse the damage it's causing to your lungs by quitting now.

Generally speaking, when people make bad choices they tend to adversely affect the person making those choices more than anyone else.  But that’s not the case with smoking.  Smoking is a bad choice that adversely affects the health of the people around them almost as much as it does the smoker.  Some would say even more so.

There is no better example of this than with people who have asthma.  Cigar and cigarette smoke is the leading cause of asthma attacks, thanks to the very thing that makes cigarettes so deadly to our health: tobacco.

When people smoke and blow out those noxious fumes into the air, they don’t just disappear.  They all go somewhere, most of them winding up in the lungs of passers-by.  And if one of those passers-by happens to have asthma—and there’s a one in 15 chance that they do—it’s an asthma attack waiting to happen.  Because when tobacco smoke enters the lungs, it severely hampers its every day functioning capability.  How?  By damaging hair-like structures on the walls of the lungs (called cilia) that keep dirt and dust from going any farther.  So instead of sweeping dust molecules away as they normally would, the particles gather and gather until the asthmatic has a difficult time breathing, thus triggering an asthma attack.

So as bad as secondhand smoke is for non-smoking asthmatics, how devastating must it be for smoking asthmatics?  Pretty dang devastating, because each and every puff they take exacerbates the damage that’s already there as a result of their asthma.

But there may be hope for them.  As research from the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine indicates, the damage smoking does to the lungs of asthmatics can be reversed if they snuff the puff.

Researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands recruited about 150 patients and assessed the “structural integrity,” for lack of a better word, of their lungs.  Most of them had never smoked before (66 of them), a little less than 50 of them were ex-smokers and about 35 of them still smoked.

Through bronchial biopsies and the administering of questionnaires that gauged their asthmatic symptoms, they found that the smokers’ lungs were far different from everyone else’s, both in phlegm production and the lining of their lungs.  For the smokers, the epithelial lining of their lungs was much thicker and they produced a whole heck of a lot more phlegm. This explains why smoking tends to exacerbate asthmatic symptoms, because there’s far less room for air to roam freely, combined with the blockage from the excessive amounts of phlegm.

As for the non-smokers and ex-smokers, logic would suggest that the non-smokers had the healthiest of lungs.  But surprisingly, there was no statistically significant difference in their epithelial lining and phlegm production compared to the non-smokers.

Reporting on the findings, the study’s lead author Dr. Martine Broekema said, “This study shows again how important smoking cessation is for pulmonary health, and this appears to be especially true for asthmatic patients.”

Broekema went on to say how the findings suggest that smoking can reverse the damage cigarettes cause to the lungs of asthmatic patients.

If nothing else, this study shows that it’s never too late to quit.  And if you have asthma, this truth especially applies to you.

Sources:
sciencedaily.com
webmd.com

University of Exeter researchers produce second study showing how smoking can help someone quit by reducing its appeal.

From patches to hypnosis, gum to acupuncture, people have tried anything and everything to quit smoking. But the best help yet may be found at your local gym, your local park or in your backyard.

According to researchers from the University of Exeter, getting out and exercising can be an extremely effective tool in reducing someone’s desire to smoke as it seems to minimize smoking’s attractiveness and appeal.

To study exercise’s impact, researchers recruited 20 men and women who smoked regularly.  Before they broke off into groups, they were all shown visual displays of people smoking, similar to the ones we were used to seeing on the backs of magazine covers and on billboards.  They were shown neutral pictures as well where the pictures were not meant to titillate their desire to smoke.

They then had each of the participants do one of two things: sit for 15 minutes or exercise at a moderate intensity for 15 minutes on a stationary bike.  Once the 15 minutes were up, they were shown the same pictures as before.  Both groups exercised or sat at least once.

Thanks to the use of eye-tracking technology, which analyzed each of the participants’ eyes to see how long or how short they were trained on the pictures, they found an 11 percent difference in the average amount of time spent looking at the smoking pictures compared to the neutral pictures.  In other words, people who exercised spent more time looking at the neutral images than they did the smoking images.  Or to put it in yet another way, the smoking images were able to grab and keep the attention of the sitters more than it did the exercisers.

The study is published in the journal Addiction and piggybacks on a separate study the University of Exeter performed this past February.  In that study, researchers found that exercise significantly reduced participants’ desire to smoke, as they reported diminished cravings post-exercise.

To me, this study is significant but not altogether surprising.  It’s well known that exercise stimulates a greater production of endorphins, which help us to feel happy and content.  Similarly, especially during intense bouts of exercise, images of juicy hamburgers on the tube are not as appealing on the treadmill as they are when we’re plopped on the sofa.  That’s partly because exercise serves as a distraction, but it’s also because exercise chemically alters the brain.  Any old distraction isn’t going to reduce your desire to smoke or eat, as anyone who’s read a book or a magazine in front of the TV will tell you.

What it is about exercise that chemically alters the brain is anyone’s guess.  That’s a matter future studies will consider.

In the meantime, as difficult as exercise may be, as little as 10 to 15 minutes of it at a moderate intensity can really help reduce cravings (the participants in this study had gone without a cigarette for nearly a day prior to the start of the study).  Try it for yourself and see if it works for you.  Who knows, you may love to exercise so much that it becomes a new habit.

Source:
sciencedaily.com
sciencedaily.com

Smoking is a very unnatural habit.

There’s definitely been a full-scale blitz on the tobacco industry in recent years.  Everywhere you look, from the federal government to state government, legislators are pushing cigarette taxes northward.  This past March, for instance, the president signed a new bill into law that would increase the federal tax on cigarettes from 39 cents to $1.00 and the tax on chewing tobacco from 20 cents to 50 cents!  Percentage wise, that’s the largest tobacco tax hike in the history of tobacco tax hikes.

And that’s just the federal tax. Add in the excise tax states imposed, and you’re spending as much as $5.00 before paying for that 20-pack of cigs!

Because the health effects of cigarette use spurn the economy an estimated $193 billion in expenses, it’s no wonder the government is tackling the issue by going after the smoker’s wallet.  After all, what better way to curb the use of cigarettes than by making it difficult to buy them?

I’m all for curbing cigarette use, but as a natural health advocate, I’m much more inclined to advise using natural methods than financial ones.  And according to a pilot study, a natural one may be found with the ol’ oat.

We all know of the benefits oats hold, by minimizing cancer risk, reducing heart disease risk and controlling cholesterol levels.  But curbing cigarette use?  After a 28-month study, we now may be able to add “natural suppressant” to oats’ highlight reel of benefits.

The study originates in Japan, where researchers recruited eight smokers to take 900 mg of an extract taken from wild oats that has this suppressive characteristic.

While the oats didn’t kick the habit entirely, the number of cigarettes smoked dropped significantly among the eight gentlemen studied.  Consider: The average number of cigarettes smoked was about 20 per day when the study started.  But by the study’s conclusion, that number had dropped to about nine per day!

Granted, nine is nine too many, but that’s a significant drop off for a suppressant entirely derived from nature.

There are several questions that need answers before putting too much credence into this study, though.  For one, it was a very small group of volunteers (thus the reliability is lacking a bit), and we also don’t know how the oats compare to other suppressants, like nicotine gums or patches.  But given that nicotine gums and patches carry side effects of their own, and given that this is a pilot study (i.e. in its seminal stages of development), the results show huge potential to be another natural way in which to break a very unnatural habit. 

The pilot study is published in the journal Pharmacometrics.

Sources:
Fox News
NUTRAingredients-usa.com

So I was watching one of those reality TV shows the other day and I happened to notice something that I thought was on the decrease:  people smoking cigarettes.  The participants in this reality series were all sitting around, talking about the latest task they had to perform and the importance of doing well.  Anyway, what really had me taken aback was that every one of them had a cigarette either in their mouth or resting between their index and middle fingers.  Though I’m not sure this group of four were bosom friends, the research indicates that if just one of them started working on quitting, the more likely it is that the others would.

At this point, every one in the world knows the dangers of cigarette smoking and the damage it does to the lungs and heart.  Why anyone would start smoking is beyond me.  My hope is that each and every one of the approximately 50 million smokers in the United States are at least trying to quit.  But if they’re constantly among friends or family members who have no desire to quit, the likelihood of their quitting is unlikely.

Published in the May 2008 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the University of California-San Diego investigated whether or not there was any solid evidence supporting the notion that smokers were affected by peer pressure, that if their friends worked on quitting, perhaps they would as well.

To determine whether social pressures had an effect on smokers required quite a bit of research and background information – especially because over 12,000 people took part in their study.  For example, the 12,000 participants had to list the names of friends and family members with whom they associated, how close they were to those friends and family members and whether or not they smoked.  The researchers then had to keep track of these participants and their peers in order to determine whether or not they kept smoking over the 30-year time frame investigated (the participants were also part of a separate study that looked into whether weight gain was “contagious” among friends).

What they found was that the closer one person was to another, the more likely it was that they tended to have the same habits.  For example, according to their results, if one spouse quit smoking, there was a 67 percent chance the other spouse would kick the habit as well.  And if a friend of one of the spouses quit smoking, there was a 35 percent chance the other would quit.  A smaller percentage, sure, but 35 percent is still significant.  In fact, even friends of friends had an effect on smoking cessation.  For instance, if one of the spouse’s friends had a friend who stopped smoking, and that knowledge became known to the spouse, there was a 29 percent chance of the spouse quitting!

Now, the researchers grant that the reliability of their findings is somewhat lacking as it can’t be stated for certain that spouses or friends directly influenced someone quitting or not quitting smoking.  The only way to determine that for certain is asking them directly.  But even asking someone directly is not exactly a reliable determinant because of the Hawthorne effect; where someone tells you what you want to hear and not necessarily what is true (if you were or are a Political Science major, you know what I’m talking about).

Despite its shortcomings, the correlation is convincing enough, from my perspective, that who you interact with socially has an enormous impact on your health – for good or ill.