In addition to the anguish of seeing the spread of a little-known disease around the world, the Covid-19 pandemic It also brought other harm to people’s mental health: social isolation.
Even before this development, researchers had already started a study on how a lack of contact with other people can harm health. Now, they have come to a conclusion: socially isolated people are more likely to show signs of being biologically older than their age.
They are also more likely to die from various causes. As a result, research published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Advances suggests that social connection plays an important role in physical health and longevity.
Understand the research
To investigate the topic, researchers recruited more than 280,000 adults as study volunteers between June 2019 and March 2022. In addition to completing a questionnaire on the social determinants of health, they also had recordings of an electrocardiogram.
In general, researchers assessed participants’ social isolation using the Social Network Index, which asks respondents about six areas. Among them are belonging to a social organization, frequency of participation in social activities per year, frequency of contact with family and friends, participation in religious events and marital status.
Each response to the question received a score of 0 or 1. Finally, total scores ranged from 0 to 4, representing different degrees of social isolation.
So, scientists developed an artificial intelligence model that uses electrocardiogram data to estimate a person’s biological age. According to them, a gap between real and biological age that is positive indicates accelerated biological aging.
For more social interactions
As a result, scientists noticed that participants who had more social contacts had a biological age closer to their real age. In the opposite cases, social isolation caused people to experience more pronounced biological aging.
Furthermore, social isolation significantly influenced the risk of mortality. According to the article describing the study, during the period of follow-up of participants, 5% of them died.
In general, those who had scores indicating social isolation had the highest risk of death compared to other groups.
“Social isolation combined with demographic and medical conditions appears to be a significant risk factor for accelerated aging,” explains Amir Lerman, author of the research.
The scientist also points out that social interactions can be included in the list of activities that contribute to people’s health and well-being, along with habits such as regular exercise, healthy eating, good sleep and stopping smoking.
