Having good social relationships -- friends, marriage or children -- may be every bit as important to a healthy life as quitting smoking, losing weight or taking certain medicines. U. S. researchers reported on Tuesday. People with strong social relationships were SO percent less likely to die early than people without such support, the team at Brigham Young University in Utah found. They suggest that the government look at ways to help people keep social relationships as a way of keeping the population healthy. "A lack of social relationships was equal to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day," psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. Her team conducted a study that examined social relationships and their effects on health. They looked at 148 studies that covered more than 308,000 people, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine at www.plosmedicine.org. Having low levels of social relationships was equal to being an alcoholic, was more harmful than not exercising and was twice as harmful as obesity. Social relationships had a bigger effect on early death than getting an injection to prevent pneumonia  ,than taking drugs for high blood pressure and far more important than living in air pollution, they found. "I certainly don't want to  _ these other risk factors because of course they are very important," Holt-Lunstad said. We need to start taking social relationships just as seriously. " But Holt-Lundstad said there was some evidence that assigning caretakers   does not help improve people's health. "Naturally occurring relationships may be different than the support received from someone who is hired for that purpose." she said. According to the text, having poor social relationships is as harmful as   _  .
being fat staying up not doing sports drinking alcohol