A Good Many of Us Will Be Dying Sooner Than Everyone Else

And not because GFF is disproportionally obese.

Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale - Yahoo! News

Quote:

Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young, and researchers said on Thursday they may have found out why -- their immune systems are haywire.

They used a "gene chip" to look at the DNA of isolated people and found that people who described themselves as chronically lonely have distinct patterns of genetic activity, almost all of it involving the immune system.

The study does not show which came first -- the loneliness or the physical traits. But it does suggest there may be a way to help prevent the deadly effects of loneliness, said Steve Cole, a molecular biologist at the University of California Los Angeles who worked on the study.

"What this study shows is that the biological impact of social isolation reaches down into some of our most basic internal processes -- the activity of our genes," Cole said.

"We have known for years that there is this epidemiological relationship between social support -- how many friends and family members you have around you -- and a whole bunch of physical outcomes," he said in a telephone interview.

Many studies of large populations have shown that people who describe themselves as lonely or as having little social support are more likely to die prematurely and to have infections, high blood pressure, insomnia and cancer.

"There are two theories -- the social provision theory, which basically is about what other people do for you in a tangible, material sense. Like, if I am sick and I have got people around me, they will take me to the doctors, they will see I take my pills," Cole said.

"The other is that there is something about being isolated and lonely that changes your body."

His team set out to investigate the second theory.

ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE

John Cacioppo, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, has been studying the health effects of loneliness for years in a group of people who have allowed him to delve in-depth into their social lives and health.

Cole and Cacioppo's team studied 14 of these volunteers -- six who scored in the top 15 percent of an accepted scale of loneliness.

"These are people who said for four years straight 'there's really nobody that I feel that close to'," Cole said.

The other eight were the least lonely of the group.

Cole's team took blood and studied the gene activity of their immune system cells -- the white blood cells that protect from invaders such as viruses and bacteria.

All 22,000 human genes were studied and compared, and 209 stood out in the loneliest people.

"These 200 genes weren't sort of a random mishmash of genes. They were part of a highly suspicious conspiracy of genes. A big fraction of them seemed to be involved in the basic immune response to tissue damage," Cole said.

Others were involved in the production of antibodies -- the tag the body uses to mark microbes or damaged cells for removal, Cole said.

The findings suggest that the loneliest people had unhealthy levels of chronic inflammation, which has been associated with heart and artery disease, arthritis, Alzheimer's and other ills.

The next step is to see if this might be treated, Cole said. "This is a biological target for intervention," he said. "Maybe we can give these people aspirin." Aspirin, an anti-inflammatory drug, is also a blood thinner taken regularly by many people to prevent heart attacks and stroke.

The report is available freely online in the journal Genome Biology at Genome Biology | homepage

I mean...uh oh.

I'd be interested to know if us lonely people have fucked up immune systems because we're lonely, or if it's just another typical trait of the introvert.

I also guess anyone who is lonely and a hypochondriac will be sick tomorrow.

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They say that about dogs too. I mean, not the marrying them part.

Originally Posted by nutty

There's lonely as in, "I'm fat and depressed and no one will hang out with me", and there's lonely as in, "I enjoy being alone and don't feel the need for a whole bunch of human interaction." Does it matter which of these categories you fall into?

I don't know if they know, but glancing at the study, it doesn't look like the why matters. The test was if the people described themselves as extremely lonely, so the latter group might not have even been studied anyway.

In the study, there's a table that describes the two groups, and the lonely group were not only higher on the loneliness scale, but also on the depression scale.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by LeHah

I don't see why this is either surprising or a "new" study. Wasn't there a less-than-surprising medical annoucement two years ago that you *could* die from a broken heart? How is this really any different?

There is a difference between your brain shutting down out of depression and despair and the actual chemical makeup of your body changing because you're lonely. And we're not just talking about different seratonin levels or increased liver function or whatever, entire bodily systems are drastically altered.

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

What if you'd typically be considered a "lonely" person, but you're not "lonely" at all.

I mean, that's really not my case, but I know people like this. They're perfectly happy, despite being alone or without a partner.

You're getting caught up in the language. "Loneliness" is not the same as "being alone".

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

It's a shock because their body chemistry changes. It's not just depression, it's not just unregulated chemical levels. Their genes are changing.

Originally Posted by LeHah

The only difference here is the amount of time either example takes. Its the same idea, only with different words used.

Uh, not really.

In broken heart and other similar traumatic disorders, the brain starts over-regulating the body. The function is a lot like a panic attack and, afterwards, there are no lasting defects, the brain can go back to normal function (in the instances where the person doesn't die, of course).

This study shows feelings can create permanent changes that are usually reserved for environmental and hereditary factors. The brain doesn't just stop functioning as it should; it changes the rules, essentially.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?