Loneliness may make cold symptoms feel worse

Conclusion This study shows that when people are infected with a common cold virus, there seems to be an association between how lonely people say they are and the self-reported severity of their cold symptoms. However, loneliness did not make people more likely to get a cold in the first place. From the findings in this study, it seems that the quality of social relationships and the feeling of loneliness are more important than the quantity of relationships and the social roles people play. A possible ironic consequence of the social networking age is that some people may have lots of "friends", via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but lack actual emotional engagement with others. There are some important considerations to bear in mind: As the authors acknowledge, loneliness did not necessarily cause the perception of worse symptoms. Other factors such as lack of sleep might affect their response to the virus and therefore reporting of symptoms. The specific mechanisms behind the link between loneliness and reported cold symptom severity was not investigated. Loneliness was only tested at the beginning of the study and it may be that loneliness levels change over time for some people. Some of those reporting worse symptoms may no longer have been feeling so lonely. The study was done in the US on healthy young to middle-aged adults. It might be that this group have a higher or lower loneliness level than other groups, so the findings may not apply to ...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Mental health Lifestyle/exercise Heart/lungs Source Type: news