The complicated role loneliness plays in 26 common health conditions

The idea that loneliness can lead to certain health problems is now being questioned. Loneliness and It can lead to a range of negative physical health consequences, including an increased risk of premature death, and it may be linked to many of the diseases it was previously thought to cause.

“Loneliness seems to be more of an indicator of illness than a direct cause.” Zhang Jihui Professor at Guangzhou Medical University. “Instead, socioeconomic factors, lifestyle choices and genetic predispositions may be factors that contribute to the risk of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.”

Social connection is essential to our mental health and ability to thrive. Yet loneliness — a painful feeling that comes from social disconnection — is affecting more and more people around the world.

To further understand how loneliness affects health, Zhang and his colleagues analyzed data from multiple biomedical databases, including medical information from 476,100 people in the United Kingdom, 16,000 in China, and 14,000 in the United States. They found that participants who reported feeling lonely had a higher risk of 30 of 56 personal illnesses, including cancer and digestive system diseases.

The researchers then performed a second round of statistical analyses on 26 of the 30 conditions, focusing on the subset of participants for whom genetic data was available. The results showed that most of the conditions weren’t actually caused by loneliness. These health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, simply co-occurred with loneliness. But loneliness still may play a role in causing six of the conditions: depression, hypothyroidism, asthma, sleep apnea, substance abuse, and hearing loss.

according to Yu HeThe researchers, also from Guangzhou Medical University, said the findings have important implications for real-world interventions. “Addressing loneliness is important, but it is not the only factor in preventing disease,” she said. “Public health authorities should also focus on improving mental health services and promoting healthy lifestyles.”

David Sbarra The new study “should give us pause for thought about how to achieve the public health goal of reducing loneliness and improving human health,” said researchers at the University of Arizona.

“To be sure, loneliness itself is aversive and appears to be causally related to the onset of depression, but in terms of its relationship to health, some of the most highly regarded findings in the field need to be reconsidered,” Sbarra said. “It’s important to understand where causation may lie and where correlation seems to lie.”

Zhang, He and their colleagues plan to investigate the potential biological mechanisms behind their findings, including how loneliness affects stress hormones and inflammation, among other things. They also hope to study populations from other parts of the world to see whether their current findings — which are based primarily on data from people in the United Kingdom — hold up.

To truly determine whether loneliness causes certain diseases, Sbarra added, researchers need to study whether having better social connections improves health. “Obviously, any intervention study showing that you can improve health markers by reducing loneliness is really amazing,” he said. “We have very few examples that show that this is actually possible.”