Social isolation is bad for your health. In fact, even living alone increases your risk of illness and death by about 20 percent, and a lack of friends or strong family ties ups your risk by half. Now, researchers have found, social isolation early in life can have substantial lasting impacts on health.
"Full social participation is such a fundamental human need that research since the 1900s has found the lack of social connections increases the odds of death by at least 50%," write Yang Claire Yang, National Academy of Sciences member Kathleen Harris, and their colleagues in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When more complicated measures of social relationships are taken into account, social isolation can nearly double the odds of ill health and death, putting it on par with smoking and a sedentary lifestyle.
[For more of this story, written by Nathan Collins, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...s-affect-your-health]
Comments (0)