How Bad Is Loneliness For The Health, Really?

On a population level, is loneliness killing us? We must confess, we still believe ^{_{(still believe!)}} in good, evidence-based scientific conclusions, so let’s examine how…

Healthy lifespan takes a hit one more time

Recently, researchers (Dr. Xuan Wang et al.) investigated this matter, and found that loneliness and social isolation were associated with substantially fewer years of life free from physical and mental disorders, with the greatest losses involving mental health deteriorating the most quickly.

First, let’s clarify the difference between loneliness and social isolation: loneliness is a subjective dissatisfaction with the quality of a person’s relationships, regardless of how socially connected or not they actually are, and social isolation is an objective measure of how much social connection a person has, regardless of how they feel about it.

So for example, a person could be:

• Socially isolated without being lonely, if they are enjoying that solitude
• Lonely without being socially isolated, if they are socially connected to many people but not feeling positively about that

Dr. Wang and her team analyzed data from 277,489 adults aged 40 to 69 who were initially free of diabetes, heart disease, lung disease, dementia, cancer, depression, and anxiety, using age 50 as the reference starting point for estimating disease-free life expectancy.

Compared with people experiencing neither loneliness nor social isolation, women experiencing both lived about 2.4 fewer years free of physical disease, while men lived about 1.7 fewer years.

When it comes to mental health, however, women experiencing both loneliness and social isolation lived about 3.7 fewer years free of mental disorders, while men lived about 5.8 fewer years.

You can read the paper itself, here: Associations of loneliness, social isolation and healthy lifestyle with life expectancy free of major physical disease and mental disorder

How it all fits together

This is consistent with how “a lonely lifestyle” vs “family visit frequency” made it into the list of The Lifestyle Factors That Matter >8 Times More Than Genes

In the case of social connection, it:

• Maintains the parts of our brains needed for language and processing social cues
• Brings us social support in a way that will generally be protective against depression
• Means that when all goes wrong, we more likely have material support too

In the case of loneliness and isolation, it:

• Allows important parts of our brain to atrophy
• Will tend towards promoting depression, which can lead to suicidality (and at the very least a decline of physical health, even without suicidality)
• Means that if we slip in the shower, someone will find our body a month later

We wrote about some of these things, here: How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation

Simply put, humans are, by evolution, social creatures. As individuals we may have something of a spectrum from introvert to extrovert, but as a species, we thrive in community. And we suffer, when we don’t have that.

But I am alone and lonely, so what can I do about it?

Aside from the previously-linked “How To Beat Loneliness & Isolation” article, you might also like our previous main feature:

Singledom & Healthy Longevity

…for how to make sure to live a full and fulfilling life, even if you’re going it alone.

And, for that matter, do swing by: When The World Moves Without Us… Can We Side-Step Age-Related Alienation?

Take care!