From supportive friendships to toxic colleagues, our relationships can shape our stress levels more than our jobs, finances, or even our diet and health habits. A new study suggests that who we surround ourselves with can negatively affect our longevity. Scientists at Indiana University in the USA conducted a study on how the people around us can impact the stress in our lives. The researchers focused on the effect people called "hasslers" had on us. A hassler is an annoying individual who regularly hassles us. Lead researcher Professor Brea Perry said, "having more hasslers is associated with accelerated biological aging…and how much wear and tear [people] have on their body".

The study is published in the journal PNAS. Researchers questioned participants about the difficult relationships in their lives to identify hasslers. Dr Perry found around one third of the participants had at least one hassler in their social network. She said about 10 per cent had at least two hasslers. She suggested that each additional hassler was associated with a 1.5 per cent faster pace of aging. Perry added: "It can actually take days for that stress response to drop and for your body to go back to normal." She highlighted the adverse effects of accumulated stress from hasslers, saying: "When you experience that chronically, over and over again, it has this long-term effect on the body."