New research suggests that chronic longterm loneliness is physically detrimental to your health and longevity; even more detrimental, possibly, than our nation’s favorite bogeyman, obesity. This is, of course, a horrible confirmation of what we’ve long suspected, though those suspicions always felt more superstitious than substantial—just a thing you say, just a metaphor. This hurts SO much. Can you DIE of loneliness? But could it actually be true?
Via the Independent:
“The results were unchanged when you considered their objective social circumstance, for instance whether they were married or lived near family and friends. These didn’t change the association between loneliness and mortality,” he told the meeting.
Although many people state that the prefer their own company, the solitude or joy of being alone is not the same as the pain of feeling alone, which can lead to depression and low self-esteem, he said.
Chronic loneliness is linked with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the morning, which raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Loneliness is also linked with higher blood pressure and a weakening of the immune system, Professor Cacioppo said.
One possible explanation for its link with ill-health is that loneliness seems to make people sleep less deeply. Lonely people tend to suffer from brief “microawakenings” in the night, which may reflect a nervousness about being alone at night, he said.
“As people age and lose mobility, they are at an increased risk of chronic loneliness, which would threaten the person’s well-being almost immediately, and would increase their odds for depression, compromised immunity, and fatigue due to poorer quality sleep — all of which could hasten their ageing,” Professor Cacioppo said.
Not everyone is terrified of loneliness, but I think it’s safe to say that most of us are. Not romantic loneliness, necessarily, but just the idea of having no one. No connections. No empathy. Existing without context. What would be the point? There’s a reason why prison reform advocates consider solitary confinement to be cruel and unusual punishment.
Our culture’s fear of dying alone (and, much worse, living alone forever) might be even more powerful than our fear of getting fat—although the two are undeniably linked. Loneliness is treated as a fitting punishment for fatness; the “fat = subhuman” branding campaign should be taught in every marketing textbook. The fact that I, a fat person, am not lonely inspires a level of internet vitriol I don’t get from even my most controversial posts on rape, abortion, and politics. The idea that losing weight functions as a cut-and-dried “cure” for loneliness is seductive—it allows people to avoid their darker, knottier issues and obsess over this single superficiality. To declare that fatness and loneliness are not synonymous, that happiness springs from something much less quantifiable, is terrifying to a lot of people.
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