Category: Loneliness

One Thing That Reduces Dementia Risk 40%

Dementia risk can be reduced 40 percent in this common way.

Dementia risk can be reduced 40 percent in this common way.

Avoiding loneliness reduces dementia risk by 40 percent, research finds.

The study helps underline the striking effect of loneliness on health.

People can still feel lonely despite regular contact with friends, family and colleagues, research shows.

Loneliness can be a feeling of not fitting in with those around you — despite having a lot of social contact.

Dr Angelina Sutin, who led the study, said:

“We are not the first people to show that loneliness is associated with increased risk of dementia.

But this is by far the largest sample yet, with a long follow-up.

And the population was more diverse.”

Socially isolated

The study followed 12,000 Americans over 50-years-old for up to 10 years.

All reported on their levels of loneliness and took cognitive tests.

During the study, 1,104 people developed dementia.

The results revealed that those who reported the highest levels of loneliness were more likely to develop dementia.

Dr Sutin explained that loneliness is different from social isolation:

“It’s a feeling that you do not fit in or do not belong with the people around you.

You can have somebody who lives alone, who doesn’t have very much contact with people, but has enough—and that fills their internal need for socializing.

So even though objectively you might think that person is socially isolated, they don’t feel lonely.

The flip side is that you can be around a lot of people and be socially engaged and interactive and still feel like you don’t belong.

From the outside it looks like you have great social engagement, but the subjective feeling is that you’re not part of the group.”

Loneliness may be linked to dementia through a number of paths:

  • Meaningful social contact may help to keep the brain engaged and healthy.
  • Lonely people may experience more inflammation in their bodies.
  • Loneliness may lead to unhealthy behaviours like drinking.

Escaping loneliness is not easy, but it is at least amenable to change, Dr Sutin said:

“Loneliness is a modifiable risk factor.

Most people might describe periods where they felt lonely and then periods where they didn’t feel lonely.

So just because you feel lonely now, you don’t always have to feel this way.”

The study was published in the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences (Sutin et al., 2018).

One Habit That Can Fight The “Hidden Epidemic” Of Loneliness (M)

Feeling isolated? This simple activity could boost your mental well-being.

Feeling isolated? This simple activity could boost your mental well-being.

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Lonely Brains Represent Real And Fictional People In The Same Way (M)

It may be that people use fictional characters to fill a space that is missing in their real lives.

It may be that people use fictional characters to fill a space that is missing in their real lives.

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An Easy Way to Reduce Depression And Loneliness

Reducing loneliness and depression could be as simple as this…

Reducing loneliness and depression could be as simple as this…

Limiting social media to 30 minutes per day decreases feelings of loneliness and depression, research finds.

The study strongly suggests that excessive social media use makes people more depressed and lonely.

It is also ironic that less ‘social’ media use reduces feelings of loneliness.

For the study, 143 college students were tracked for three weeks.

Half were told to use social media as normal, while the other half were instructed to limit it to 30 minutes per day.

All reported their use of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram along with feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness and fear of missing out.

Dr Melissa G. Hunt, the study’s first author, explained the results:

“Here’s the bottom line.

Using less social media than you normally would leads to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness.

These effects are particularly pronounced for folks who were more depressed when they came into the study.”

Dr Hunt does not think young people should stop using social media all together.

Limiting screen time, though, seems sensible, she says:

“It is a little ironic that reducing your use of social media actually makes you feel less lonely.

Some of the existing literature on social media suggests there’s an enormous amount of social comparison that happens.

When you look at other people’s lives, particularly on Instagram, it’s easy to conclude that everyone else’s life is cooler or better than yours.”

Dr Hunt concluded:

“When you’re not busy getting sucked into clickbait social media, you’re actually spending more time on things that are more likely to make you feel better about your life.

In general, I would say, put your phone down and be with the people in your life.”

The study was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (Hunt et al., 2018).

The Effect Of Social Isolation On The Brain (M)

Over one-third of US adults over 45 report feeling lonely and among those over 65, one-quarter feel socially isolated.

Over one-third of US adults over 45 report feeling lonely and among those over 65, one-quarter feel socially isolated.

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The Emotion That May Cause Type-2 Diabetes

The emotion causes consistent stress to the body, which may hasten the onset of diabetes.

The emotion causes consistent stress to the body, which may hasten the onset of diabetes.

Prolonged loneliness can lead to type-2 diabetes, research suggests.

An absence of deep, positive relationships is the key factor, rather than a simple lack of contact.

In other words, one can still be lonely in a crowd.

One-third of adults in the US report that they feel lonely at least some of the time.

The same figure for the UK is one-in-five.

It is not known exactly why loneliness is linked to type-2 diabetes.

One possible explanation is that loneliness causes consistent stress to the body, which hastens the onset of the disease.

Dr Ruth Hackett, the study’s first author, said:

“The study shows a strong relationship between loneliness and the later onset of type 2 diabetes.

What is particularly striking is that this relationship is robust even when factors that are important in diabetes development are taken into account such as smoking, alcohol intake and blood glucose as well as mental health factors such as depression.

The study also demonstrates a clear distinction between loneliness and social isolation in that isolation or living alone does not predict type 2 diabetes whereas loneliness, which is defined by a person’s quality of relationships, does.”

The study included 4,112 people aged over 50 who were tracked over 15 years.

During this period, 264 people developed type 2 diabetes, with lonely people at a higher risk.

Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects how the body turns food into energy.

It means that the body finds it difficult to keep blood sugar at normal levels.

Diabetes can cause serious health problems, such as heart and kidney disease as well as vision loss.

Dr Hackett said:

“I came up with the idea for the research during UK lockdown for the COVID-19 pandemic as I became increasingly aware and interested in how loneliness may affect our health, especially as it is likely that many more people were experiencing this difficult emotion during this period.”

Stress linked to loneliness may be causing diabetes, said Dr Hackett:

“If the feeling of loneliness becomes chronic.

Then everyday you’re stimulating the stress system and over time that leads to wear and tear on your body and those negative changes in stress-related biology may be linked to type 2 diabetes development.”

The study was published in the journal Diabetologia (Hackett et al., 2020).

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