THE EFFECTS OF LONELINESS ON THE BRAIN AND BODY

Loneliness can increase your risk of heart disease by 29% and stroke by 32%, which are huge numbers and is not something to ignore. The thing about loneliness is that when you are lacking in meaningful social connections, your body is conscious of the fact that you're alone. So it starts to turn up the dial on your stress response. Your sympathetic nervous system, starts to go on high alert, so it's natural that you might feel more paranoid. It's natural that you might feel more suspicious of people and not feel as open to connecting with other people, and it turns down the dial in certain parts of your brain where you feel love, connection, relationship. Then you hit into this vicious cycle, and that's what scientists refer to as the paradox of loneliness. Because loneliness drives you to retreat and makes it harder for you to crave that meaningful interaction that would resolve this feeling. There's a chain reaction that happens with the hormones in your body. First thing is your cortisol levels go into complete disarray. It's what peaks when you drink coffee. It's also what wakes you up in the morning. It's that kind of buzzy feeling, but it's also what elevates when you get stressed, your dopamine increases. This is a feel good hormone, but it really drives you towards quick rewards so that maybe drinking, gambling, going out without thinking about the consequences for yourself. You'll also see a decrease in serotonin, oxytocin, and your natural opioid levels. When you speak to a friend or you eat a meal that is just so delicious, you'll get these natural rushes of things, which will be natural pain relievers. Those things will all decrease when you're feeling lonely, you start to see this cascading effect on your physical health. Short-term effects are an increase in anxiety and increase in stress. So you may retreat, just generally feel more tired, generally feel less of an impulse to go out and also feel this increased anxiety and paranoia In a lonely body, the longer term effects are you're more likely to be sick. More often. You're more likely to be susceptible to the flu Covid, a slight cough that's going around in your office that's also linked to pain in your body. So chronic pain, back pain, or just generally feeling run down. Most of the time your sleep quality is not very good, so you may sleep exactly the same amount of hours, but you'll wake up. I know you're quite tired, you're slightly uneasy. Loneliness impacts your memory. That can lead to cognitive decline. It can be a precursor to dementia. Increased inflammation caused by loneliness or honesty by anything directly impacts the heart and heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S Loneliness affects your life expectancy. It can increase your risk of premature death on a level that's comparable with smoking, which is the number one preventable cause of death in the US and around the world. It's hard to believe, but there is really strong evidence to suggest that just connecting with people, even if it's one small piece of the puzzle, will at least shift the needle a little bit to towards making you feel better physically as well as emotionally. There's actually lots of research that shows that hearing the voice of someone you care about has a direct impact on your brain and on your nervous system. But there are other things like art, for example. Art therapy has really grown in recent years, and it's something that in certain rehabilitation centres, art therapy is really integral. There's a lot of research that just seeing nature is really, really good for you. So going outside, speaking to people, picking up the phone, exercising, speaking to strangers, ultimately what you are really looking for is understanding what makes you happy. You're not looking to be surrounded by people and you're not looking to engage in a social scene just to be there. What you're looking for is to connect with people on a level that really, really deeply connects with you and that will have a really tangible physical effect on you.