“The Surprising Effects of Loneliness on Your Health: Study Finds Similarities to Deprivation of Food – Science Alert”

2023-04-22 09:18:57

Loneliness – expressiveness

Study has shown that 8 hours of loneliness can drain energy and increase fatigue as much as 8 hours without food in some people.

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Do you sometimes feel lonely? Does this feeling last for long? So be careful because this may lead to many problems for your health. Studies have shown that permanent isolation puts us at risk of physical harm, and its effect may be similar to the effect of deprivation of food for long hours!

Read the following report, excerpted from the “Science Alert” website. Science Alert to understand the details.

Humans usually need companionship as much as they need water, air, and nourishment. A new study by researchers from the University of Vienna in Austria and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom has found that 8 hours of loneliness can drain energy and increase fatigue as much as 8 hours without food in some people.

loneliness feeling

According to the report, it appears as if the low energy is the result of changes in the body’s balanced response, as the body translates the lack of social contact into a form of biological interaction.

“In the laboratory study, we found striking similarities between social isolation and food deprivation. Both conditions caused decreased energy and increased fatigue, which is surprising given the Food deprivation literally makes us lose energy, while social isolation won’t.”

For the laboratory study, 30 female volunteers were examined during 3 separate days of 8 hours each: one day without social contact, one day without food, and one day without social contact or food. Participants provided feedback regarding their stress, mood and fatigue, while their heart rate and salivary cortisol levels (standard indicators of stress) were also measured.

Loneliness

The field experiment involved 87 participants living in Austria, Italy or Germany, and covered periods of COVID-19 lockdown measures between April and May 2020. Participants spent at least 8 hours in isolation and were asked to answer questions via smartphone regarding stress, mood and fatigue.

While the field experiment did not include food, its results — lower energy levels following isolation — matched the lab work, suggesting that the comparison between lack of social interaction and energy loss is the right one. The real-world test was also where those who lived alone were shown to be the most socially affected. And their reported energy levels decreased on days when they interacted with no one around compared to days with few short social interactions – an effect not seen in the less social participants.

“The fact that we see this effect even following a short period of social isolation suggests that low energy might be an adaptive response, which can become maladaptive in the long term,” says psychologist Giorgia Silani, from the University of Vienna. the long”.

So with the passage of time and continued isolation, the damage is likely to get worse, as previous studies have compared loneliness to public health problems such as obesity, indicating that there is a high risk of premature death due to social isolation.

Previous research has also shown evidence of a feedback loop, whereby a lack of social engagement makes us less likely to want to go out into the world and make connections with others, a kind of lonely spiral that is increasingly difficult to break out of.

The research has been published in a journal Psychological Science.

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