What everyone ought to know about loneliness.
Isolation and Loneliness Can Be Deadly
From the UCLA
Healthy Years Newsletter:
Prolonged
loneliness and isolation can have serious effects on your health. It can
increase bouts of Depression and sadness, disrupt sleep, elevate blood pressure
and raise levels of the stress hormone cortisol.
Research
has shown that extreme loneliness can increase your chances of early death by
14 percent. In fact, loneliness is put in the same risk category as smoking 15
cigarettes a day, and has twice the impact on premature death as does obesity.
The University
College London (UCL) and Manchester University have been conducting an ongoing
multi-year study called ELSA -English Longitudinal Study of Aging. They
reported this finding:
Social isolation was associated
with poor scores on all measures of cognitive function.
John Cacioppo is a
psychologist and neuroscientist. He has been studying the effects of loneliness
and social isolation for over twenty years, most recently as a Professor and Director,
Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago. In
an interview in The Guardian, he noted:
When
you allow for all the other factors, you find that chronic loneliness increases
the odds of an early death by 20%.
For
one thing, we found that loneliness decreases the effectiveness of sleep. You
have sleep fragmentation and you always wake up tired. The cumulative wear and
tear is greater if you lonely than if you are not. You cannot make a direct
line to heart disease or cancer, but you can certainly see the effects on the
immune system.[1]
A Cure: Friendships
Angela Troyer, the
program director of neuropsychology and cognitive health at Baycrest Hospital
in Toronto, Nicole Anderson, Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Psychology
at the University of Toronto and Kelly Murphy PhD, Clinical Neuropsychologist
at Baycrest wrote Living with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Guide to
Maximizing Brain Health and Reducing Risk of Dementia.
In a PsychologyToday article, Professor Troyer wrote: “Did you know that connecting with
friends may also boost your brain health and lower your risk of dementia?” She
went on to make these four points about social interaction: you may live
longer, you will enjoy better physical health; you will enjoy better mental
health; and you may even lower your risk of dementia.
In Anderson, Murphy
and Troyer’s work, they’ve determined that getting out and doing stuff with
friends results in a stronger immune system, and reduces the risk of
depression. Further, those interactions are associated with better memory and
cognition, or, the construction of the important brain attribute “cognitive
reserve”. Cognitive reserve seems to help our mental capability as we age.
Your Brain Wants You
to Hang Out and Do Stuff With Your Friends
My late father was a member of a church-based group called
“The ROMEOS”. Yes, that really was the name of the group. And yes, it was
church-based. ROMEO is an abbreviation of “Retired Old Men Eating Out”. Once a
week, they went to a restaurant. It forced older men to get up, moving, and out
with friends. At that point in his life, he could no longer drive and my
mother, his wife and companion for over sixty years, had passed. He looked
forward to that weekly encounter.
The implications are rather clear: it isn’t just important
to have close friends, it is essential to good health. Go to church. Some
sources recommend volunteering as a way to meet new people and develop new
relationships. Attend lectures at the library. Meet a friend at Starbucks. Set
a schedule to call a family member every week. Play board and strategy games - they require you to be social. And a good game of chess, mahjong, or go will tax your brain (in the healthy way) too.
www.BigBrainPlace.com offers fun stuff that happens to be good for your brain.
Comments