Loneliness has been found to impact many diseases and disorders including heart disease to Alzheimer’s disease.
Depression is common among the lonely.
Cancers tear through the bodies of lonely people more rapidly, and colds definitely prey on the lonely more frequently.
A recent study suggests the pain of loneliness activates the immune pattern of a primordial response commonly known as fight, flight or freeze.
Apparently loneliness and inflammation and depression cycle on eachother. If was found that people who felt lonely one year had increased gene activity around inflammation and norepinephrine later on. And people who had increased inflammation felt lonelier the next year. “It’s a two-way street,” Canli said: “Loneliness predicted biological changes, and biological changes predicted changes in loneliness.
“If the cycle continues, that could explain chronic isolation and the subsequent depression and illnesses plaguing the lonely.
“There are things we can do to get out of a depressed or lonely state, but they’re not easy,” Cole says.
“Part of the reason is because these negative psychological states develop some kind of molecular momentum.
Read more…http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/11/29/457255876/loneliness-may-warp-our-genes-and-our-immune-systems?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151206&utm_campaign=bestofnpr&utm_term=nprnews