See how your money can buy you more than just things.
The practice also reduces the expression of genes which cause inflammation.
A common social problem that is influencing self-control and leading to changes in eating behaviours.
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.”
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:
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).
Feeling isolated? This simple activity could boost your mental well-being.
Solitude may offer the chance for self-exploration and self-connection, but how much is too much?
About 40 percent of people in this study reported that they were happy living alone.
For many people merely being alone does not necessarily mean feeling lonely.
It may be that people use fictional characters to fill a space that is missing in their real lives.
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).
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