Nowadays, young people often die prematurely.
The lack of social contacts has turned into a health problem. The US chief medical adviser called it an epidemic.
Loneliness and isolation aren’t the same. Isolation has more or less clear criteria: absence of family, rare contacts with those around. Loneliness is a subjective concept. A person can live alone and not feel lonely. He can be a member of a big family and suffer because there is no faithful spirit by his side.
“Dissatisfaction with social relations between the desired and the existing”, this is how they define this condition in the scientific literature, which they put in the same row as smoking, sedentary lifestyle, obesity, and air pollution. If loneliness lasts for years, then it is called chronic.
According to research, one third of Americans over the age of 35 and about one quarter of the elderly consider themselves lonely.
Loneliness has always been associated with older age groups. But now it is also the problem of youth. According to Cigna Group insurance company, 80 % of 18-24 years old feel lonely. Among people over 66, their number is 41%, “Nature” reported.
Brigham Young University scientists studied 70 scientific works that were carried out between 1980 and 2014. About three and a half million people’s data was collected.
It was found that the risk of dying for those living without a family is 32% higher, for those who are socially isolated – 29%. The feeling of loneliness increases the probability of premature death by 26%.
The study of Chinese scientists confirms this. They studied in 1986-2022 ninety articles about more than two million people from 20 countries. It was found that women were more susceptible to feeling lonely taking into account their profession, social status and physiological characteristics, but this was compensated by good social contacts in old age.
A connection with Alzheimer’s disease, dementia was found. By the way, the results are contradictory. In 1948 American specialists studied data from the Framingham Cohort Study. Two thousand participants were selected who complained of loneliness at least three times a week. They did not have the APOE ε4 gene variant, which is considered an indicator of susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease. In other words, the risk of aging is low. But over the next ten years, 14% were diagnosed with dementia. Three times more often than in the case of socially active people, the authors noted.
Social isolation is accompanied by poor nutrition, harmful habits, hence the increase in blood inflammatory markers, cholesterol, immune system disorders.
But how to explain the same risks in the case of those who seem to live in a group, but suffer from loneliness? It was noted that they are often characterized by unhealthy behavior, sleep disorders, neuro-endocrine and immune disorders.
It is clear that loneliness has a complex socio-psychological nature, but apparently, there is something more. Based on the data of the national biobank in Great Britain, 15 genetic variants have been identified that are associated with this condition.
Loneliness also affects brain structures. The network of the so-called passive mode of brain work is more active in people who live indoors. They are always focused on their thoughts. That is what is observed during depression.
We still need to find out the cause and effect. But the need for contact is obvious. Physical exercises are offered in Germany. Here they tested and found out that an hour of active walking a day fills up the lack of contact for young people.
The problem of loneliness was accepted by WHO. In Great Britain, they have already adopted a strategy to combat this dangerous social phenomenon and established a structure, which the mass media called the “Ministry of Loneliness”. Maybe other countries will follow the British example.
