News Section | Addiction
Loneliness is as bad for your health as smoking
A scientific research has suggested that social isolation, in the long term, is as damaging as a 15-a-day cigarette habit or being an alcoholic.
Many other studies have found that those with a poor social network are at increased risk of dementia and high blood pressure.
The studies reason that the genes we need to fight off serious viral infections seem to be less active in the lonely than in the rest of the population, and that loneliness may cause cancer or heart disease.
“Feeling alone and unloved can also make it harder to sleep and even speed the progression of dementia. When time takes its toll on the body, loneliness steepens that slope of descent,” the Daily Mail quoted Chicago-based psychologist John Cacioppo, who has studied the phenomenon, as saying.
His work found that loneliness raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol and can push blood pressure up into the danger zone for heart attacks and strokes.
Disclaimer: Bioscholar is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The articles are based on peer reviewed research, and discoveries/products mentioned in the articles may not be approved by the regulatory bodies.
I find it interesting that smoking bans ostracize and isolate smokers. Double edged sword?
The problem is that smokers enjoy smoking, it’s the government and the police state that force the loneliness by banning them from privately owned property that they have no Constitutional right to enact. The public does not invest anything and have no right to dictate their preferences as to ostrasize 1/4 of the population! When the police state we live in comes after other property rights like they did to small businesses over smoking those anti-smoking nazi’s will be screaming foul! They say that would never happen, but it did. Not only did small businesses lose their property rights, so did home OWNERS! Idiots.
I am sure the drug companies will come up with a happy pill for isolated people. Smoking, salt, sugar, tranfats. People simply must be forced via the full force and deep pockets of government fines, penalties and nameless, faceless bureaucrats to comply! Yes, we are moving to a police state. Anyone who has ever run into insane government rules, regulations and uncontrolled power needs to realize it will only get worse if people do not stand up and say ENOUGH.
They are now talking about taxing food and even taking kids out of their homes if some unelected state official decides the kid it overweight. They also working on a warm, fuzzy sounding bill in Congress “Protect Childen from Pronography” that allows government to compile a huge data base on your Internet use, the sites you visit, your pass words and even what you write and to whom. I’ll protect my children and you protect yours, but don’t let the government have this power. It is always for the “children” what a bunch of baloney!
This is not America! Do you want your kids and grand kids living in a police state where every action they take is monitored and controlled? I don’t!
Smoking bans, that close bars and isolate and ostracize, make total sense when you remember the company that funded all the propaganda about second hand smoke, not only sell Nicorette and Nicoderm, but anti anxiety and anti depressants too. You WILL use the products of Johnson and Johnson! Their nicotine instead of tobacco. Their anti anxiety drugs instead of having a beer with friends. Their anti depressants instead of a pool gane with friends. Their Splenda and lap band surgery instead of your common sense.