How loneliness leads to poor health

A large transversal study reveals that loneliness is associated with higher risks of smoking, physical inactivity, poor diet and obesity, highlighting its impact on public health and the need for targeted interventions.

Study: Loneliness is associated with unfavorable behavior and obesity: a Danish study based on the population of 12,258 individuals. Image credit: New Africa / Shutterstock.com

In a recent study published in BMC Public HealthResearchers explored how loneliness could lead to unhealthy and obesity habits, explaining why lonely people are more likely to undergo unfavorable health results.

Their results indicate that lonely people are more likely to smoke, to follow unhealthy diets and to suffer from obesity; They are also less likely to be physically active. In particular, lonely men are less likely to consume large amounts of alcohol.

Background

Loneliness, which researchers define as a negative emotional condition caused by the gap between the quantity of social interaction that a person wants to have and how much he has, can be deadly. Solitary people have higher mortality rates and are more likely to suffer from heart disease, type 2 diabetes and depression.

What motivates these relationships? Researchers hypothesize that diet, physical inactivity and smoking could be the cause. In the absence of social support and clues, lonely people could adopt more unhealthy habits. They could also face challenges regulating their impulses or facing adversity.

Despite these theories, literature reviews suggest that the statistical evidence of these relationships are mixed.

Links can also be bidirectional; While lonely people have higher obesity rates, individuals with a higher body mass index (BMI) are more likely to be alone. Existing studies are faced with challenges, including small effects, a lack of generalization and unreliable measures of loneliness.

About the study

Researchers have studied how loneliness is associated with obesity and health -related habits such as alcohol consumption, smoking, exercise and diet. They applied a transversal design that used a study of a national survey conducted in Denmark in 2017.

The survey has collected information on people over 16 at the national and regional level, in particular information on weight, size, health habits and socio -demographic characteristics (partnership status, country of origin, level education, age and sex). He reached a final sample of 122,258 individuals.

Loneliness was measured using a three -element scale which assessed the feelings of being left out, the absence of a company and the isolation. On a three to new scale, a score of seven or more said that a person was lonely.

People were considered to have unhealthy habits if they followed an unhealthy diet (measured by a lower than recommended consumption of fish, vegetables and fruit and a high consumption of saturated fat), consumed more than 10 units of alcohol in A week, smoked daily, and did not comply with the directives for physical activity.

The researchers used statistical models to estimate the rating relationships for the relationships between solitude, health -related habits and obesity after adjustment for socio -demographic characteristics.

Results

By analyzing the data, the researchers discovered that 8.2% of the population could be classified as lonely. Solitary people were less likely to live with a partner and to be Danish. Young people, women and those enrolled in educational programs were all more likely to be alone.

By examining the levels of obesity among lonely persons, researchers found that 21.4% of lonely people were obese against 15.4% of non -Loney. They were more likely of unhealthy diet (22.6% against 14.7%), to be physically inactive (41.8% against 28.6%) and smoking daily (22.7% against 15.8%) .

In particular, they were slightly less likely to have high levels of alcohol consumption. These relationships remained after adjustment for socio -demographic characteristics.

Researchers also found that if loneliness was linked to obesity and bad results for men and women, the relationship was stronger for women. However, while lonely men have shown a lower probability of consuming high levels of alcohol, women have not done so.

The influence of loneliness on obesity and health -related habits has shown a certain variation between the stages of life. For example, obesity and loneliness showed the strongest association between adolescents and young adults and no association during old age.

Conclusions

The results of this study support previous work that show positive relationships between solitude and smoking, except at the start and in the middle of adulthood.

Since then the majority of smokers have adopted the habit before their 18th birthday^th The birthday, tackling loneliness among adolescents, could lead to significant advantages for public health.

Regarding alcohol consumption, researchers have found that lonely men (but not women) are less likely to drink more than 10 alcohol units per week.

This can be explained by the importance of social consumption in Danish culture, and this relationship may not be generalizable to other contexts where the prevalence of solitary consumption could lead to a positive association.

Loneliness was associated with obesity, with a lower diet and low levels of physical exercise. These relationships can have behavioral and psychological mechanisms, where weight stigma and lack of support could lead to unhealthy adaptation strategies and new social isolation.

These results provide important information on the reasons why loneliness is a silent killer. Social isolation has become a widespread global problem, and interventions to promote healthy behavior would also benefit from targeting social connectivity to improve health and well-being.