Being lonely as you age will wear you out!

Aug 21 2007

Researchers have found that being lonely especially in later life can take a toll on a person's health.

Psychologists at the University of Chicago say that not only is loneliness tiresome but it can also be bad for your health particularly as you age as it appears to speed up the rate of physical decline that occurs naturally with age.

Dr. Louise Hawkley and Dr. John Cacioppo have been studying the aging process for a decade and they say that everyone's physiological resilience declines with age.

Their research leads them to believe that loneliness accelerates the rate of the decline.

Their studies involved two main subject groups, college-age people around age 19 and middle-age people ranging in age from 50 to 68.

Dr. Hawkley says that lonely people in the older group have significantly higher blood pressure than the non-lonely, which was not true in the younger group; that she says illustrates that the decline accumulates over time and shows up later in life.

The researchers found that while lonely people appear to get as much sleep as the non-lonely, the quality of their sleep is not as good.

They often wake during the night and are still tired when they get up in the morning; this results in less quality sleep and more daytime dysfunction.

The research also showed that although lonely people reported the same number of major life events as others, they were more likely to report more chronic stressors and unhappy childhood events.

Lonely people also viewed their past in a more negative light, but were also more likely to feel helpless and threatened in their current situations and less likely to seek help when they were stressed out.

The older group of lonely people also had significantly higher levels of the stress hormone epinephrine in their urine samples.

Dr. Hawkley says loneliness is not just about being alone as people can be alone and not be lonely, people can be surrounded by other people and yet feel lonely.

Loneliness is more a case of discontent with social relationships and Hawkley suggests that while lonely people should make the effort to get out and socialise they should be careful when selecting relationship partners on whatever level.

Hawkley says sometimes over-eagerness leads to choosing the wrong types of people.

She advises lonely people to volunteer their help to somebody else rather than trying to deal with just their own needs and in that way they may forge useful and fulfilling friendships.

The research is published in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science.