Why is social isolation bad for health?

It’s hard to see the damage of isolation as it’s happening because it’s so incremental. It’s like watching paint fade on the side of a barn. Children grow up, careers wind down or change, friends move away, husbands may sicken or die.

All of that is the real and present danger -- the steady tide eroding our limbic connections. If you don’t steadily renew those connections and commitments, you can end up swept a long way out to sea before you realize what’s happening. And don’t think it can’t happen to you.

Surveys show that 60% of older American women live alone. Those who get out of the house and stay involved with their communities, activities, friends and families do well; those who don’t tend to decay. The stakes are high.

A study of 4,000 women and men in Alameda County, California, showed a direct link between the size of one’s social circle and survival, with larger circles bringing ever greater longevity. Women with fewer than six regular contacts outside the house had significantly higher rates of blocked coronary arteries, were more likely to be obese and to have diabetes, high blood pressure and depression, and were two and a half times more likely to die over the course of the study. Having either a good marriage or just one close friend cuts mortality by a third, and the benefit increases the more your circle broadens.

It’s reassuring to note that both quality and quantity count independently. Some people have a few close friends or family while others have a broad network of involvement with their community. Either works well, though the best is to have both.

There is a growing recognition that older Americans are turning friends into the new family as siblings and children scatter across the country and as people move to different communities with retirement. Marriage brings a major increase in longevity to men and a minor one to women, probably because men report that their main source of social connection is their wife while women report a much broader network of close connections. In one study, older patients, both women and men, were three times more likely to survive heart attacks if they were socially connected and supported.

In another, women who had strong relationships with others were twice as likely to survive. Even the limbic connection to pets counts for quite a lot. Dog owners, for instance, have lower cardiac mortality.

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