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New research emphasizes that socializing with friends and family can help protect people against heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes, and other conditions and diseases.
The study suggests that social interactions can keep people healthy because these interactions stimulate the immune system and reduce the risk of disease.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge, along with colleagues from China, reached these conclusions after studying proteins in blood samples taken from more than 42,000 adults recruited to the UK Biobank, the SWNS news agency reported.
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The study team said 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 highlight the importance of social contact in keeping us well. More and more people of all ages are reporting that they feel lonely,” as SWNS noted.
Socializing with friends and family can help protect people against heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes and other conditions and diseases, a new study suggests. (iStock courtesy of user skynesher)
“That is why the World Health Organization has described social isolation and loneliness as a global public health problem… We need to find ways to address this growing problem and keep people connected to help them stay healthy.
The evidence increasingly shows that both social isolation and loneliness are linked to poorer health and premature death, the same source reported. But the underlying mechanisms through which social relationships impact health have apparently been elusive until now, the news agency also said.
“We need to find ways to keep people connected to help them stay healthy.”
US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy previously warned against the health risks of loneliness, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
“Loneliness is a common feeling that many people experience,” he said when he issued an advisory nearly two years ago on the topic, according to The Associated Press. “It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a sensation that the body sends us when something we need to survive is missing.”
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““Millions of people in America are fighting 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 a struggle that too many people are experiencing.”
Researchers involved in the new study said one way to explore biological mechanisms is to look at proteins circulating in the blood, SWNS noted. Proteins, which are molecules produced by genes, are essential in helping the human body function properly.
They can also serve as useful pharmacological objectivesallowing scientists to develop new treatments to address diseases.
“Social relationships play an important role in keeping us healthy,” said one of the scientists involved in a new study. (iStock)
The Cambridge team and scientists from Fudan University, China, examined the “proteomes”, or collection of proteins, in blood samples donated by more than 42,000 British adults aged between 40 and 69.
That allowed them to see which proteins were present at higher levels among socially isolated or lonely people, and how these proteins were distributed. related to poorer healthSWNS said.
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The team calculated social isolation and loneliness scores for individuals in the study, which was published in Nature Human Behavior, a monthly peer-reviewed journal.
Social isolation is an objective measure based, for example, on 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 linked to poorer health, but we’ve never understood why.”
Loneliness, on the other hand, is a subjective measure based on whether an individual feels lonely.
When the researchers analyzed the proteomes and adjusted them for factors such as age, sex, 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 immune responses, the team said, and they also showed links with cardiovascular diseasetype 2 diabetes, stroke and premature death.
The findings, one researcher said, “recognize the importance of social contact in keeping us well.” (iStock)
The researchers then used a statistical technique to explore the causal relationship between social isolation and loneliness, on the one hand, and proteins, on the other.
Using that approach, they identified five proteins that were found in abundance during periods of loneliness.
“We know that social isolation and loneliness are linked to poorer health, but we’ve never understood why,” said Dr. Chun Shen of the department of clinical neurosciences at the University of Cambridge and at the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence at Fudan University.
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“Our work has highlighted a number of proteins that appear to play a key role in this relationship, and the levels of some proteins in particular increase 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 identify 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 identify some key proteins in the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many human diseases.” (iStock)
He also said: “The proteins we have identified give us clues about the biology underlying poor health among socially isolated or lonely people, highlighting why social relationships play such an important role in keeping us healthy.”
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. like oxytocin (known as the “love hormone”), which can reduce stress and improve mood.
The team found a “strong” association between ROM and the volume of the insula, a brain center for interoception, the ability to sense what is happening inside the body.
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The higher the ADM levels, the lower the volume of the region.
Higher levels of ADM were also linked to lower volume of the left caudate, a region involved in emotional, social, and reward processes. Higher levels of ADM were also linked to a higher risk of dying young.
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The researchers said another of the proteins, ASGR1, is associated with higher cholesterol and increased risk of cardiovascular disease, while other identified proteins play roles in the development of insulin resistance, the “lining” of arteries. and cancer progression.
Fox News Digital’s Melissa Rudy contributed reporting.
