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StillnessHealth fact

People with weak social ties die earlier on average. A 2010 analysis of 148 studies found that those with stronger relationships were about 50% more likely to be alive at the end of the studies than those with weaker ones.

U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory, 2023

HealthMind

The story behind the card

The 2010 meta-analysis, led by the psychologist Julianne Holt-Lunstad, pooled data on more than 300,000 people followed for an average of about seven and a half years; a meta-analysis combines many studies to reach a more reliable answer. In 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General, the country's leading public health official, issued an advisory on loneliness that reviewed this and later research. It concluded that social disconnection carries a mortality risk comparable to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. These are patterns across large populations, not a prediction for any one person. The advisory also describes likely pathways: long-term stress hormones, inflammation, poorer sleep and fewer healthy habits such as exercise or seeing a doctor.

Türkçe oku
Sosyal bağları zayıf olan insanlar ortalamada daha erken ölüyor. 148 araştırmayı bir araya getiren 2010 tarihli bir analize göre güçlü ilişkileri olanların, araştırmaların sonunda hayatta olma olasılığı zayıf olanlara göre yaklaşık %50 daha yüksekti.
ABD Genel Cerrahı raporu, 2023

Psikolog Julianne Holt-Lunstad'ın yürüttüğü 2010 tarihli meta-analiz, ortalama yedi buçuk yıl boyunca izlenen 300 binden fazla kişinin verilerini birleştirdi; meta-analiz, daha güvenilir bir sonuca varmak için birçok araştırmayı bir arada değerlendirmektir. 2023'te ABD'de halk sağlığından sorumlu en üst yetkili olan Genel Cerrah (Surgeon General), yalnızlık üzerine bu ve sonraki araştırmaları gözden geçiren bir uyarı raporu yayımladı. Rapora göre toplumdan kopukluğun ölüm riskine etkisi, günde 15 sigaraya kadar içmeninkiyle kıyaslanabilir. Bunlar geniş nüfuslarda görülen eğilimlerdir; tek bir kişinin geleceği hakkında kesin bir şey söylemez. Rapor olası yolları da sıralıyor: uzun süreli stres hormonları, iltihap, kötü uyku ve egzersiz yapmak ya da doktora gitmek gibi sağlıklı alışkanlıkların azalması.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Loneliness
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Memory consolidation is the slow process that turns a fresh, fragile memory into a lasting one, and much of it happens during sleep. In 1997 the German researchers Werner Plihal and Jan Born showed that different parts of the night help different kinds of memory. Twenty healthy men learned lists of word pairs and practised mirror tracing, drawing a shape while watching only its reflection. Recall of the word pairs improved most over the first half of the night, when deep, slow-wave sleep dominates, while the drawing skill improved most over the second half, when REM sleep, the stage of vivid dreams, lasts longer. Researchers think that during sleep the brain replays the day's experiences and moves new memories from temporary storage in the hippocampus, deep in the brain, into longer-lasting networks in its outer layer, the cortex.

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The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) is the United States' national public health agency, founded in Atlanta in 1946. Its advice on exercise follows the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, whose second edition, published in 2018, drew on a review of the previous decade's research. Earlier advice had focused on preventing disease over the years; the new edition also listed benefits people can feel at once. Besides easing anxiety and lowering blood pressure, a single session helps the body respond to insulin, the hormone that moves sugar from the blood into cells. Most of these effects grow with regular activity, while others, such as fitness, strength and a lasting fall in blood pressure, take weeks or months. The guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week.

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