As we search for the android path to good health — boot camp exercising, prison camp food –  consider some time-tested things proven to make you live longer and feel better doing it.

MAKE FRIENDS – Pals can keep you healthy says “Yourtotalhealth.com” .  Socializing lowers the blood pressure, reduces bad habits such as smoking and overeating, and gives you a sense of well-being even when you’re alone.  Being a hermit is a coach seat to bad health and early death, says that same research. It also says that’s why the modern trend towards smaller circles of face-to-face friends is troubling for the medical community. Nope, texting and Twittering doesn’t do it.

GET A DOG OR CAT — Owning a pet can affect on your health even greater than medication, research shows. About.com: Stress Management says dogs and cats especially “provide excellent social support, stress relief and other health benefits.” Pets can: improve your mood, be better for blood pressure than drugs, make you get out and exercise, help with social support by attracting friendly people who like pets, stave off loneliness with unconditional love, reduce stress … Pets increasingly help in rehab hospitals with children and elderly, and terminal patients.

FALL IN LOVE –  The dating service, “It’s just lunch” and the Australian health site Health.NINEMSN.com have mounds of research that say when Cupid’s arrow hits your heart, your heart gets healthier. Love: can make you smarter, fights cancer, improves your mood, helps your heart, prolongs your life, lowers cholesterol, keeps you young, and yes, married people live longer and have fewer stress-related diseases.

(photos from the harry jackson jr. archive. Top, NEL, “Never Ending Love,” a therapy dog who works at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and started her life out as a stray in Central Missouri; Center right: a man and woman in matching outfits jog on a path in Forest Park.)