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- Loneliness has been linked to everything from heart disease to Alzheimer's disease. Depression is common among the lonely. Cancers tear through their bodies more rapidly, and viruses hit them harder and more frequently. In the short term, it feels like the loneliness will kill you. A study suggests that's because the pain of loneliness activates the immune pattern of a primordial response commonly known as fight or flight.
When you're lonely, and by extension potentially depressed, maybe there's also the risk that you stop taking care of yourself as much. Thereby exacerbating the biological factors contributing to the negative impact on ones health. I guess that ties into the 'two-way' street nature of loneliness described in this paragraph:What Canli finds really interesting about Cole's results is that people who felt lonely one year had increased gene activity around inflammation and norepinephrine later on. And people who had increased inflammation felt lonelier the next year. "It's a two-way street," he said. "Loneliness predicted biological changes, and biological changes predicted changes in loneliness."