Why loneliness is bad for your health

The National Institute on Aging has produced an infographic for loneliness in the older population , encouraging them to stay connected. They might try learning something new, exercising, volunteering, or adopting a pet. We all share a responsibility to combat loneliness among the elderly, and our efforts will help all parties, including ourselves!

Not every older person can participate in every activity recommended to address loneliness. When we invest time to discover what is possible, and do that, we can significantly improve quality of life for all. Loneliness Is Bad for Your Health. Oxytocin also seems to be linked to reduced stress. So what can we do about all this?

There are no real medications to treat loneliness, unless one is also depressed or has high levels of anxiety. Issues with loneliness seem to be more prevalent in older adults.

CNN reporter and physician Sanjay Gupta suggests that society should start to view loneliness as another chronic disease. If so, then patients need long-term strategies to manage this problem.

Not surprisingly, the currently recommended treatment revolves around establishing social relationships. For older adults, joining the local senior center is a wonderful way to get involved in activities and meet people. What about volunteering? Senior volunteer programs are always looking for older adults who will deliver meals, do mailings and a variety of other activities. It is surprising how small things can also be helpful. A simple phone call once a day from an adult child is an opportunity to share things from the day or about grandchildren.

We've known for a while that being alone is a deadly dangerous condition. Being socially disconnected can also up your risk of developing high blood pressure or inflammation, and make people more aggressive. But for the new study, researchers looked at a group of patients from rural parts of Minnesota, all dealing with heart failure. They found that those Minnesotans who described their lives as highly socially isolated, seeing virtually no one else on a daily basis, were three and a half times more likely to die than people who were suffering from some of the exact same heart problems, but who reported having enough social support and connections to others.

People who didn't have any regular human contact were also more likely to be hospitalized, made more frequent visits to their doctors, and were more likely to be rushed to the emergency room than their peers. His own research suggests that in the US, elderly people and adult men are the two most at-risk populations for social isolation, in part, because they tend to have smaller social networks to begin with.

In addition to being more at-risk physically, there's also budding evidence that socially isolated people are changing their brain chemistry in dangerous ways. One recent study in mice found that just two weeks of "social isolation stress" caused negative behavioral changes and shifts in their brain chemistry.

The finding hasn't been replicated in humans yet, but it made the mouse-studying scientists wonder if they might be able to some day use drugs to help human patients cope with the mental aspects of social isolation, and decrease their isolation-fueled aggression chemically. Being alone social isolation and feeling alone loneliness are not the same issue. Besides, generally speaking, people who live alone, whether they be 20 years old or 80, tend to have more social connections with others , not less, as Klinenberg has reported in the past.

Both can put health at risk, however. Skip directly to site content Skip directly to page options Skip directly to A-Z link. Alzheimer's Disease and Healthy Aging. Section Navigation. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Syndicate. Minus Related Pages. What's this? Links with this icon indicate that you are leaving the CDC website. Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.

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