Social isolation can make you more tired, study finds
Continuous social isolation not only makes you lonely, but physically tired, according to a new study by the University of Vienna.
It creates a sense of hunger not unlike that of food deprivation.
Science news outlet Neuroscience News said researchers at the university studied 30 female volunteers in a lab over the course of three days. Each day they spent eight hours without social contact, food or either, while scientists recorded physiological stress responses like heart rate and cortisol.
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.
Researchers then compared the results to a field study they conducted during the COVID-19 lockdown to see the effects of social isolation, finding that social isolation had effects “comparable with the effects of food deprivation,” the study said.
Neuroscience News said when someone goes without food for a period of time, the body feels a sense of hunger that needs to be satisfied. “As a social species, we also need other people to survive,” and a lack of social contact creates a similar “craving response” that pushes us to connect with others.
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“In the lab, we found striking similarities between social isolation and food deprivation. Both states induced lowered energy and heightened fatigue, which is surprising given that food deprivation literally makes us lose energy, while social isolation would not,” first authors Ana Stijovic and Paul Forbes told Neuroscience News.
Another study author, Giorgia Silani, said in the article, “It is well-known that long-term loneliness and fatigue are related, but we know little about the immediate mechanisms that underlie this link. The fact that we see this effect even after a short period of social isolation suggests that low energy could be a ‘social homeostatic’ adaptive response, which in the long run can become maladaptive.”
The scientific journal Cell defines social homeostasis as one’s ability to do a better job of forming social connections by assessing and improving the quantity and quality of one’s social interactions.
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Loneliness
The Deseret News recently reported on our need to feel belonging as human beings and said, “Belonging is not just good. It’s not just a happiness boost. It is vital to survival.”
Research from the paper “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation” found that when we do not feel like we belong, it significantly lowers mental and physical health, creating risk of behavioral problems “ranging from traffic accidents to criminality to suicide,” the Deseret News reported.
Academy expert Roger O’Sullivan told the Deseret News that by trying to build different kinds of relationships with others, people are able to reduce the risk of loneliness in their lives, but doing so “varies according to where you are on your journey with loneliness.”
