Can Loneliness Make You Sick?

Being lonely can be a terrible thing. You have no one to talk to, no way to express your feelings, and everything gets bottled up inside. It turns out that being lonely can have even worse effects. Multiple studies say that being lonely can increase a person chance of getting sick. If this is true, you can add it to the long list of negative effects being lonely can have. Let’s find out if it belongs on the list or not.

loneliness11There have been multiple studies published on this topic. The first that I am going to talk about is a study published in the scientific journal PubMed. In this study, 430 patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) were examined to test the hypothesis that their loneliness attributed to poor survival.

The patients level of loneliness was determined by “The Mannheim Social Support Interview” which is a set of questions along the lines of, “who do you like to talk to and do things with?”, and “who would you talk to in order to make you feel better about yourself?”. This was done to determine the patients “social network”, which is basically who they talk and hang out with.

The results of the study found that patients with small social networks, or patients who were lonely, had an elevated risk of mortality. But there is a catch. The study found that the greater risk of dying did not have anything to do with how severe their CAD was, or how much stress the person had.

This study could be one that attributes positively to the hypothesis that being lonely can get you sicker. Although it does not directly test this hypothesis, (this study tested people that were already sick) it did suggest that being lonely could lead to an increased risk of dying.

The study design was well and it was done properly. It ruled out 3rd variables by testing all of the participants on a variety of things such as activities of daily living, depression, income, smoking habits, and participation in religious activities. I believe this is a study that can be used as proof that being lonely can increase your risk of being sick, and can increase your risk of dying.

6554108407_1e12449aaa_zIn another study published in the scientific journal PubMed, 823 older, dementia-free patients were studied to test the hypothesis that loneliness is associated with an increased risk of Alzheimer disease. The patients underwent a baseline clinical evaluation which included medical history and a full neurological examination. The patients took this same evaluation for every year the study was done. The patients loneliness was determined by the de Jong-Gierveld Loneliness Scale, which assess things such as loss of spouse and low self-esteem.

The results of this study found that during a 4 year follow-up period, 76 out of the 823 patients developed severe Alzheimer disease, and lonely people’s risk of getting Alzheimer disease was doubled compared to people who were not lonely.

This study is definitely one that proves being lonely can increase the risk of getting sicker. The results proved the hypothesis, and the study design was well. This study also ruled out 3rd variables with the extensive testing of the patient’s brain and the extent of their loneliness. Also, the 4 year follow-up period after the testing was done contributes to the validity of the study.

In conclusion, there have been many studies that try to prove that being lonely can make a person sick or increase their chance of dying, and I believe that the studies prove this hypothesis correct. In the first study, scientists found that lonely people with coronary artery disease were at higher risk of dying than the patients with coronary artery disease that were not lonely. In the second study, scientists found that a percentage of older people that were lonely contracted Alzheimer disease, and their risk for contracting it was double than the risk of non-lonely people contracting it.

So, if you want to stay healthy for a long time, you might want to surround yourself with a bunch of friends that you trust, and try not to feel lonely.

 

Sources:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17283291

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3890922/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756979/

http://www.livescience.com/52888-loneliness-health-inflammation-viral-infections.html

http://jeanniepage.com/tag/loneliness/

http://chrisguillebeau.com/the-opposite-of-loneliness/

One thought on “Can Loneliness Make You Sick?

  1. Michael Bliss

    This post is both interesting and well done. The studies you chose were good studies to prove your claim. In your first study, it is good that the scientists tested for so many third variables, but in effect does this possibly present the Texas Sharpshooter problem being involved? In this case, the study was fairly large so it may have minimized the effect of chance in this instance. The second study was also very well done. It was large and comprehensive. A challenge that probably faced these scientists was the measurement of loneliness, but I was surprised to discover in your post that there is an actual loneliness scale. But, we must question how accurate this loneliness scale is, since emotion is a very hard thing to measure.

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