How loneliness activates chronic disease and shortens life

Humans are emotional creatures. Some more so than others. We have our ups and downs, and expect to feel the spectrum of emotions as a normal part of life. But just because these emotions may be normal for most of us, that doesn’t mean they’re harmless…

Especially loneliness. For older adults, loneliness is proving to be a killer.

For some time, research has shown that loneliness presented a real danger, but until now scientists didn’t really understand why.  Was it a detrimental side effect of depression? Not close.

It turns out that loneliness actually triggers several responses in your body — starting with inflammation — that can make you physically sick and ultimately lead to a shorter life filled with chronic disease.

What loneliness does to your body

Inflammation is a natural response your body has to stress. For example, if you eat something too spicy, you may experience inflamed intestines. Such acute inflammation arises quickly and generally dissipates after a normal period of time.

However, inflammation that is chronic and low-grade or not externally apparent is cause for concern — like the inflammation that can occur with loneliness. It can interfere with the bodies normal processes and diminish its ability to maintain healthy functioning systems.

That’s exactly what a group of researchers  from University of Chicago and the California National Primate Research Center saw in both humans and rhesus macaques — a species of highly social primates.[1] They found that loneliness was linked with a phenomenon called “conserved transcriptional response to adversity” (CTRA) — a  type of fight-or-flight stress signal to the body — which causes an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation, while decreasing expression of genes involved in antiviral responses.

In other words, lonely people have a less effective immune response and more inflammation.

The same group of researchers ran a second study to see the impact of loneliness on leukocyte cells — the cells of the immune system that are involved in protecting the body against bacteria and viruses.

Not surprisingly, the leukocyte cells showed the same effects of CTRA involving an increase in inflammation gene expression and a decrease in antiviral responses. But the researchers also found levels of the fight-or-flight neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, to be present. And this was a big clue as to what was causing the inflammation.

Norepinephrine stimulates the production of a particular kind of immune cell — an immature monocyte cell that shows high levels of inflammatory gene expression and low levels of antiviral gene expression. Both the lonely humans, and as well as the lonely monkeys, showed high levels of these cells in their blood.

Together, these findings support how loneliness results in fight-or-flight stress signaling, which increases the production of immature monocytes, causing increased inflammation and impaired anti-viral responses. These “danger signals” activated in the brain by loneliness ultimately affect the production of white blood cells.

And all of this comes together to increase risk of death for older people by at least 14 percent. But all is not lost…

Reducing loneliness can increase happiness and lifespan

The best way to reduce loneliness would be to become more social. For those hardest hit by loneliness, that’s often easier said than done. But there are ways to reduce its negative impact.

In a study, ^[2] published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity, researchers found that the program of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) — which teaches how to focus on the present as opposed to dwelling on the past or projecting the future — was a good way to reduce loneliness.

More impressively, the researchers found that the technique also altered the expression of inflammation-producing genes linked to heart disease risk.

“Our work presents the first evidence showing that a psychological intervention that decreases loneliness also reduces pro-inflammatory gene expression,” says senior study author Steve Cole, a UCLA professor of medicine and psychiatry. “If this is borne out by further research, MBSR could be a valuable tool to improve the quality of life for many elderly.”

The stress reduction program in the study included weekly two-hour meetings that taught meditation technique, a single day-long retreat and daily meditation for 30 minutes.

If you don’t have that much time to commit, you can still benefit from the practice. So even if you’re not lonely right now (and we hope you never are), getting into the practice of meditating could afford you numerous benefits down the road. In fact meditating for as little as 12 minutes a day can significantly improve mild cognitive impairment and possibly ward off Alzheimer’s-like symptoms, in addition to reducing stressful thoughts.

Don’t forget about the inflammation fighting power of food, either. Make a habit of eating these top 5 inflammation-fighting foods no matter your mood.

But the surest way to ditch loneliness is to force yourself to reach out to friends and family. If they are not there for you, find ways to volunteer in your community or get involved in programs that can pave avenues that lead to more friendships.

[1] http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uoc-ltc112015.php
[2] http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/meditation-reduces-loneliness-237463