You probably know someone who seems to do everything right. They cook from scratch, walk every day, go to bed early. And still, something feels off.
A large new analysis of nearly 280,000 middle-aged adults may explain part of why. People who felt lonely lost years of life free from depression and anxiety, and healthy habits did not close the gap.
The study was published in Nature Communications by researchers at Tulane University. Using age 50 as a reference, men with both loneliness and social isolation lost about 5.8 years free from depression or anxiety. For women it was 3.7 years.
Both groups also lost years free from physical disease, though less. Men lost about 1.7 of those years. Women lost about 2.4.
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Loneliness and isolation are not the same thing
The researchers treated the two conditions as separate. Social isolation is objective. It is how many people you actually see and how connected your days are to other households.
Loneliness is subjective. It is the feeling that your relationships fall short of what you want, even when the calendar looks full.
Each one on its own already shaved years off disease-free life. For women, loneliness alone did slightly more damage than isolation. For men, isolation alone did slightly more damage than loneliness.
Why diet and exercise could not fully fix it
The researchers then layered in a healthy lifestyle score covering diet, regular exercise, enough sleep and not smoking. Those habits measurably narrowed the losses tied to social isolation.
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Loneliness did not behave the same way. The same healthy habits did not significantly reduce the extra years lost to feeling lonely. A brisk walk and a plate of vegetables, in other words, cannot carry the full load.
Lead author Lu Qi, a professor at Tulane's Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said in a press release that men appear more vulnerable to loneliness in particular.
The findings sit alongside earlier work on what chronic loneliness does to the heart, immune system and brain. This is an observational study, so it cannot prove loneliness itself causes the lost years.
The researchers argue loneliness and isolation may need different types of help, since lifestyle habits alone appear unlikely to close the loneliness gap.
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This article is made and published by Aksel Kryhlmand, who may have used AI in the preparation.