It really is better to give than to receive, according to a new study, which found that providing real help to others protects our health and helps us to live longer.

"This study offers a significant contribution to the research literature on the relationship between social environment and health, and specifically to our understanding of how giving assistance to others may offer health benefits to the giver by buffering the negative effects of stress," explained lead scientist, Dr Michael Poulin, of the University of Buffalo in the US.

The study followed the progress of almost 850 people over a five-year period.

At the start of the study, all were asked about stressful events that had occurred in the previous year. These included the loss of a job, financial problems and the death of a family member.

The participants were also asked if they had provided any real help to family or friends in the same period, including doing errands, helping with childcare and providing transportation.

An analysis of the results revealed a ‘significant interaction between helping behaviour, stressful events, morbidity and mortality'.

"Specifically, over the five years of the study, we found that when dealing with stressful situations, those who had helped others during the previous year were less likely to die than those who had not helped others," the scientists explained.

They concluded that helping other people ‘reduces mortality specifically by buffering the association between stress and mortality'.

"These findings go beyond past analyses to indicate that the health benefits of helping behaviour derive specifically from stress-buffering processes and provide important guidance for understanding why helping behavior specifically may promote health," the team added.

Details of these findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health.