New research highlights that spending time with friends and family can help protect people from heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes and other conditions and diseases.
The study suggests that social interactions can keep people healthy because these interactions strengthen the immune system and reduce the risk of disease.
Cambridge University researchers, together with colleagues in China, came to these conclusions after studying proteins in blood samples taken from over 42,000 adults recruited to the British Biobank, the SWNS news agency reported.
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The research team said that social relationships play a key role in well-being.
Professor Barbara Sahakian, from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, said: “These findings point to the importance of social contact in our health. More and more people of all ages are reporting feeling lonely,” as noted by SWNS.
Spending time with friends and family can help protect people from heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes and other conditions and diseases, a new study suggests. (iStock courtesy of user skynesher)
“This is why the World Health Organization has described social isolation and loneliness as a global public health problem… We need to find ways to tackle this growing problem and keep people connected help them stay healthy.”
Evidence is increasingly showing that both social isolation and loneliness are associated with poorer health and early death, the same source reported. But the fundamental mechanisms through which social relationships influence health have apparently remained elusive, the news agency also said.
“We need to find ways to keep people connected to help them stay healthy.”
American Surgeon General dr. Vivek Murthy has previously warned about the health risks of loneliness, as previously reported by Fox News Digital.
“Loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience,” he said when he issued advice on the subject nearly two years ago, according to The Associated Press. “It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s the feeling our body sends us when something we need to survive is missing.”
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““Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right,” he also said at the time. “That’s why I issued this advisory to pull back the curtain on the struggle that too many people are experiencing.”
Researchers associated with the new study said one way to investigate biological mechanisms is to look at proteins circulating in the blood, SWNS noted. Proteins, which are molecules produced by genes, are necessary for the proper functioning of the human body.
They can also be useful drug targetsallowing scientists to develop new treatments to fight disease.
“Social relationships play an important role in our health,” said one of the scientists associated with the new study. (iStock)
The team from Cambridge and scientists from Fudan University in China examined the “proteomes” or set of proteins in blood samples given by more than 42,000 British adults aged 40 to 69.
This allowed them to see which proteins were present at higher levels among people who were socially isolated or lonely – and how those proteins associated with poorer healthsaid SWNS.
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The team calculated social isolation and loneliness scores for individuals in the study, which was published in Nature Human Behaviour, a monthly peer-reviewed journal.
Social isolation is an objective measure based on, for example, whether people live alone, how often they have contact with others and whether they participate in social activities, the team said.
“We know that social isolation and loneliness are associated with poorer health, but we’ve never understood why.”
In contrast, loneliness is a subjective measure based on whether an individual feels lonely.
When the researchers analyzed the proteomes and adjusted for factors including age, gender and socioeconomic background, they found 175 proteins associated with social isolation and 26 proteins associated with loneliness.
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Many of the proteins are produced in response to inflammation, viral infection and as part of the immune response, the team said – and they also showed links to cardiovascular diseasestype 2 diabetes, stroke and early death.
The findings, said one researcher, “demonstrate the importance of social contact for our good health.” (iStock)
The researchers then used a statistical technique to investigate the causal link between social isolation and loneliness, on the one hand, and the protein, on the other.
Using this approach, they identified five proteins that were abundant during periods of loneliness.
“We know that social isolation and loneliness are associated with poorer health, but we’ve never understood why,” said Dr. Chun Shen from department of clinical neurosciences at the University of Cambridge and the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University.
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“Our work has highlighted a number of proteins that appear to play a key role in this relationship, with levels of some proteins specifically increasing as a direct consequence of loneliness,” he said, as reported by SWNS.
Professor Jianfeng Feng from the University of Warwick said: “There are more than 100,000 proteins and many of their variants in the human body… AI and high-throughput proteomics may help us to determine some key proteins in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many human diseases and revolutionize the traditional view of human health.”
“AI and high-throughput proteomics can help us determine some key proteins in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many human diseases.” (iStock)
He also said: “The proteins we identified give us clues about the biology that underpins poor health among people who are socially isolated or lonely, highlighting why social relationships play such an important role in maintaining our health.”
One of the proteins produced at higher levels as a result of loneliness was ADM.
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Previous studies have shown that ADM plays a role in the stress response and in the regulation of stress hormones and social hormones, such as oxytocin — known as the “love hormone” — that can reduce stress and improve mood.
The team found a “strong” association between ADM and the volume of the insula, the brain’s center for interoception, the ability to sense what’s happening inside the body.
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The higher the ADM levels, the smaller the volume of the region.
Higher ADM levels were also associated with lower left caudate volume—a region involved in emotional, reward, and social processes. Higher levels of ADM are also associated with an increased risk of dying young.
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The researchers said that another of the proteins, ASGR1, is associated with higher cholesterol and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease — while other proteins identified play a role in the development of insulin resistance, the “cloaking” of arteries and cancer progression.
Fox News Digital’s Melissa Rudy contributed reporting.
