New research emphasizes that spending time with friends and family can help protect people from heart attacks, strokes, type 2 diabetes and other conditions and diseases.
Research suggests that social interaction may keep people healthy because this connection strengthens the immune system and reduces the risk of disease.
Researchers from Cambridge University, together with their colleagues in China, reached these conclusions after studying proteins in blood samples taken from more than 42,000 adults collected in the UK Biobank, SWNS media reported.
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The research team said social relationships play a major role in well-being.
Professor Barbara Sahakian of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge said, “These findings emphasize the importance of social interaction in keeping us well. More and more people of all ages report feeling lonely,” as SWNS noted.
Staying connected with friends and family can help protect people from heart attack, stroke, type 2 diabetes and other conditions and diseases, new research suggests. (Stock courtesy of user skynesher)
“That’s why the World Health Organization has described social isolation and loneliness as a global public health concern … We need to find ways to tackle this growing problem and keep people connected to help them stay healthy.”
Evidence is increasingly showing that both social isolation and loneliness are linked to poor health and premature death, the same source reported. But the underlying mechanisms by which social relationships affect health have apparently been elusive so far, the news agency said.
“We have to find ways to keep people connected to help them stay healthy.”
US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has previously warned about the health risks of loneliness, as Fox News Digital previously reported.
“Loneliness is a common feeling that many people have,” he said during a consultation about two years ago on the topic, according to the Associated Press. “It’s like hunger or thirst. It’s a feeling the body sends us when we lack something we need to live.”
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““Millions of people in America are struggling in the shadows, and that’s not right,” he said at the time. That’s why I put out this advice to undo the struggle that many people are facing.
Researchers involved in the new study say another way to test biological mechanisms is to look at proteins circulating in the blood, SWNS noted. Proteins, which are molecules produced by genes, are important in helping the human body function properly.
And they can serve as useful drug targets, allowing scientists to develop new treatments for disease.
“Social relationships play an important role in keeping us healthy,” said one of the scientists associated with the new study. (Stock)
A team from Cambridge and scientists from Fudan University, China, examined the “proteome,” or suite of proteins, in blood samples donated by more than 42,000 British adults aged 40 to 69.
That allowed them to see which proteins were present at higher levels among people who were socially isolated or isolated — and how these proteins were linked to poor health, SWNS said.
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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 a measure based on, for example, whether people live alone, how much they interact with others and whether they participate in social activities, the team said.
“We know that social isolation and loneliness are linked to poor health, but we’ve never understood why.”
Loneliness, in contrast, is a measure that depends on whether a person 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 proteins are produced in response to inflammation, viral infection and as part of immune responses, the team said – and have shown links to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and premature death.
The findings, said the researcher, “underscore the importance of social interaction to keep us healthy.” (Stock)
The researchers then used a statistical procedure to test the causal relationship between social isolation and loneliness, on the one hand, and proteins on the other.
That way, they identified five proteins that were found in abundance during periods of loneliness.
“We know that social isolation and loneliness are related to poor health, but we have never understood why,” said Dr. Chun Shen from the 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 an important role in this relationship, as the levels of certain proteins in particular increase as a direct result 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 their many variants in the human body … human diseases and it has changed the traditional view of human health.”
“AI and high-throughput proteomics can help us discover proteins that are important for the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of many human diseases.” (Stock)
He also said, “The proteins we identified provide biological clues that support poor health among lonely or lonely people, highlighting why social relationships play an important role in keeping us healthy.”
One of the proteins produced at higher levels due to loneliness was ADM.
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Previous studies have shown that ADM participates in the response to stress and in the regulation of stress hormones and social hormones, such as oxytocin – known as the “love hormone” – which can reduce stress and improve mood.
The team found a “strong” correlation between ADM and the volume of the insula, the brain’s cognitive hub, the ability to feel what is happening inside the body.
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The larger the ADM levels, the smaller the circuit capacity.
Higher levels of ADM are also linked to lower volume of the left caudate – a region involved in emotional, reward and social processes. Higher levels of ADM are also linked to an increased risk of early death.
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The researchers say that one of the proteins, ASGR1, is associated with high cholesterol and an increased risk of heart disease – while other proteins have been identified that play a role in the development of insulin resistance, “furring” of blood vessels and the progression of cancer.
Melissa Rudy of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
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