Loneliness affects One’s Health Negatively, a Study Reveals

Feeling lonely can have a negative impact on one’s health and in particular, disrupts the immune system – in fact, this increases the risk of health complications in the future.

 

Lisa Jaremka, lead author of the study, which was conducted at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University, said, “It is clear from previous research that poor-quality relationships are linked to a number of health problems, including premature mortality and all sorts of very serious health conditions. And people who are lonely clearly feel as if they are in poor-quality relationships.”

 

In making a comparison between people who had several social connections, lonely people not had a greater chance of herpes virus reactivation but their bodies also produced larger amounts of inflammation-related proteins, also known as IL-6.

 

Some of the diseases related to chronic inflammation are arthritis, type-2 diabetes, frailty, functional decline and heart disease.

 

The 200 participants of the aforementioned study were breast cancer survivors and had completed treatment between two months and three years. When blood samples were taken and analyzed, it was found that people who were lonely had higher levels of the antibodies against the cytomegalovirus along with stress, fatigue and depression as opposed to those who weren’t lonely.

 

Although this virus isn’t very dangerous and remains dormant for long periods of time, its reactivation reveals that something is wrong with the body.

 

As for higher levels of inflammation, the same trend was found when researchers took into consideration factors such as sleep, age and general health etc. What these findings led to was the conclusion that those who are more socially connected tend to be healthier as they experience more positive outcomes.