It is not good to live in isolation. For the past twenty years, studies have highlighted the strong correlations between social relationships and health and longevity. While isolation has already been associated with greater immune system vulnerability, a new American study confirms the poison that constitutes isolation on physical condition.
Published in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), she confirms that loneliness is as harmful to health as physical inactivity in adolescents or diabetes in the elderly.
Researchers from Northwestern University and Princeton University, in the United States, analyzed the associations between relationships and health at all stages of life by taking into account different factors such as Body Mass Index (BMI) .
They discovered that in adolescence the lack of friends increases the risk of being overweight (BMI over 25). The impact of loneliness is as pernicious as the lack of sport at a young age. In the elderly, loneliness is as risky as diabetes. “In adolescence, social isolation increases the risk of inflammation in the same proportion as physical inactivity. And the effect of loneliness onhypertension in the elderly exceeds the impact of risk factors such as diabetes in old age,” the study finds.
On the other hand, it appears that the people most surrounded by their loved ones are less likely to fall ill and thus lengthen their life expectancy in good health.
Dare more to break the loneliness
To break your loneliness, it is important to get out of your comfort zone by showing greater openness to others. By daring more, we multiply the opportunities to meet. For example, this can mean volunteering, accepting invitations or going to events organized by his city or his colleagues. So we smile at our neighbors, at the people we meet and we show optimism. A virtuous circle will then be set up.
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