In a melancholy episode of AsapSCIENCE, creators Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown explain via whiteboard animation how loneliness created around a person’s lack of satisfying social interactions can adversely affect their health, thus increasing their chance of an earlier death.
Research has found that lonely people have 209 different gene expressions in some of their white blood cells, including increased activity of pro-inflammatory transcription factor. Now, inflammation is an important response to injury, but chronic inflammation wreaks havoc on your body. As a result, we see …making loneliness as deadly of a risk factor as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, lack of exercise, or obesity!