Loneliness as bad for health as smoking and obesity

New York, February 16: It is a well-established fact that loneliness may make a person prone to develop a type of dementia linked to Alzheimer's disease or may increase risk of intellectual decline in older people. Now, a new study has revealed that loneliness can also be bad for the wellbeing of the body and mind.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have claimed that loneliness can be as harmful to one’s health as cigarette smoking and obesity.

Besides making people unhappy, leading to suicidal thoughts and increasing depressiondefine-like behavior, social isolation also affects their mind, in fact, it hikes blood pressure and stress levels, general wear and tear, as well as the chances of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD), an incurable and a degenerative brain disorder which slowly destroys the ability to reason, remember, imagine, and learn.

Since the loneliness diminishes a person's will power and perseverance, the person loses his/her ability to follow a healthy lifestyle, the researchers have found.

Lead researcher Prof John Cacioppo the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago, said: "Loneliness not only alters behaviour, but loneliness is related to greater resistance to blood flow through your cardiovascular system. Loneliness leads to higher rises in morning levels of the stress hormone cortisol, affects the immune systemdefine, higher blood pressure and depression.

"The lonely have poor health. They exercise less, are more likely to quit. Eat more calories. They comfort eat more fats and sugars. Loneliness also lowers the ability to control yourself."

According to Prof. John Cacioppo, the health-wise difference between a lonely person and non-lonely person is akin to a smoker and a non-smoker. "That stunned all of us, myself and all my colleagues in terms of the effects it had," he said. "It shows just how powerful it is.

Prof. John Cacioppo and colleagues reached their findings after examining the loneliness level or social behavior of 23 female undergraduates, using fMRI (functional MRIdefine). During fMRI, the subjects were shown unpleasant pictures depicting human conflict and as well as pleasant photos of money and happy people.

The researchers noticed that the women who rated themselves as lonely were least likely to have strong activity in their ventral striata, a region of the brain associated with rewards, when shown pictures of happy people. In contrast, the ventral striata was much more activated in non-lonely people when they saw pictures of people in pleasant settings.

Although loneliness may influence brain activity, the researchers speculate that activity in the ventral striatum may even prompt feelings of loneliness, said Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at the University and the co-author of the study.

Decety along with Prof. Cacioppo, presented their paper –“Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection” at a symposium, "Social Emotion and the Brain," at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.