Being lonely for a long time impacts on one's immune system

Jan 21, 2013 21:01 GMT  ·  By

According to a new research whose findings were made public during this year's meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, loneliness can be linked to poor health.

To cut a long story short, the researchers who investigated this issue maintain that those who for one reason or another end up feeling lonely for a considerable period have their immune system negatively affected by their not-so-jolly state of mind.

Unlike people who do not feel lonely most of the times, those who lack and crave companionship witness more reactivation of latent viruses in their organisms.

As well as this, they tend to produce more inflammation-related proteins when being faced with acute stress, News Medical informs.

As researcher Lisa Jaremka explains, loneliness translates into a person's being less capable of handling various situations without their feeling stressed.

This can ultimately lead to the individual developing chronic stress, which is well known for its ability to toy with the immune system.