Having no one to share your joys and your sorrows with can harm not only your emotional health but also your physical one. According to a study by University of Chicago researchers, loneliness increases blood pressure in elders, a condition that can lead to death by cardiovascular disease, the number one cause of death in the United States.
“The major causes of morbidity and mortality have changed from infectious to cardiovascular diseases. Loneliness is a complex physiological phenomenon that incorporates feelings of dysphoria (depression) and stress, dissatisfaction with social support and hostility towards others,” authors Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo wrote in a report published in the journal
Psychology and Aging.
Under the study, the researchers made 229 subjects, aged between 50 and 68 years, fill out a questionnaire to find out how lonely the participants felt they were. In addition, other risk factors for cardiovascular diseases were also gauged. An analysis of the filled questionnaires showed that those who were lonely had blood pressures readings that could be as high as 30 points more than those who did not see themselves as lonely, even after other risk factors like alcohol consumption, smoking and weight were taken into consideration.
“The take-home message is that feelings of loneliness are a health risk, in that the lonelier you are, the higher your blood pressure. And we know that high blood pressure has all kinds of negative consequences,” Hawkley said. Added Cacioppo, “Lonely people differ from non-lonely individuals in their tendency to perceive stressful circumstances as threatening rather than challenging. They passively cope with stress by failing to solicit instrumental and emotional support and by withdrawing from stress rather than by actively coping and attempting to problem solve.”
According to the researchers, a 30-point increase in blood pressure equaled the difference between a normal diastolic pressure of 120 mm/Hg and level 1 hypertension, pegged at 150 mm/Hg. With boom in technology, the popularity of the Internet and increase in nuclear families, more and more people are becoming lonely. “We have single-parent families, parents living far away from their children, children living far away from each other, and people being transient, not staying put very long,” Hawkley said. Earlier, loneliness has been found to cause depression, insomnia and even stress.
While the obvious solution to this might seem seeking more people and forging friendships with them, Hawkley said loneliness is more complex than that. “Remember, people can feel lonely even if they are with a lot of people. You can think of Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana – there was certainly nothing lacking in their social lives, yet they claimed to have felt intensely lonely,” she said, adding that in many cases, loneliness might stem from the inability of the people to forge close bonds with others.
“They may want to go out and make friends, and yet they have a nagging lack of trust with whomever they want to interact with, or they may feel hostile. So they end up behaving in ways that force the potential partner away,” Hawkley said. Agreed University of Chicago's Windermere Senior Health Center medical director Deon Cox-Hayley. “Some people can be in a large group and still feel lonely. We still don't know how to get at the treatment of loneliness. So how to apply the study's findings to patients is still not completely clear, but being aware of the connection is a good starting point,” Cox-Hayley said.
