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Loneliness and Heart Disease
It's long been known that people who feel isolated have shorter lives than those who have a close social support network.
Recent research confirms this fact and shows how loneliness affects health all the way down to the cellular level.
Steve Cole, an associate professor of medicine in the division of Hematology-Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, and a member of the UCLA Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, found that loneliness increases inflammation at the cellular level. It does this by affecting immune cell gene expression.
In other words, when someone is lonely, it affects the efficiency of their immune system and lowers their ability to fight the damaging effects of inflammation. And, since inflammation is at the root of virtually all chronic health problems from arthritis to heart disease, this affects mortality.
The bottom line is that you don't need to feel close to a lot of people to prevent this problem. To be healthiest, you do need to have at least a few people with whom you have close social contact.
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