Social isolation

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.

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.