--- title: 5 Ways Loneliness Can Hurt Your Health description: There's nothing wrong with solitude. Being lonely, however, can harm your health. Here are five ways loneliness can be dangerous. canonical: https://time.com/5009202/loneliness-effects/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-11-13T20:04:08.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-12T08:28:20.494Z article:section: Health og:title: 5 Ways Loneliness Can Hurt Your Health og:description: There are benefits to feeling connected, research shows og:url: https://time.com/5009202/loneliness-effects/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ccc99aa2bcc5221/6988e497bc6cfc27bc3e3ceb/lonliness.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5184 og:image:height: 2916 og:image:alt: Young Woman Sleeping og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: 5 Ways Loneliness Can Hurt Your Health twitter:description: There are benefits to feeling connected, research shows twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8ccc99aa2bcc5221/6988e497bc6cfc27bc3e3ceb/lonliness.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 5 Ways Loneliness Can Hurt Your Health > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=4067b6d3-5a0b-499d-83a1-1ec84d23373f&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Intentional Communities Help Connect People [Watch (HLS stream): Intentional Communities Help Connect People](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/W2XdvuPG.m3u8) (4:15)  _Published 2017-11-03. “Intentional communities” are a growing trend in an increasingly lonely country._  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Nov 13, 2017 8:04 PM UTC  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Nov 13, 2017 8:04 PM UTC There’s nothing wrong with living alone, and there’s surely nothing wrong with enjoying solitude. Being lonely, however, is a whole different matter. Not only does it feel terrible, it can also harm your health. Here are five ways [loneliness can be dangerous](http://time.com/4741049/loneliness-health-risks/). **—Elevated cortisol:** Loneliness can cause stress, which your body interprets as danger. In response, it releases the hormone cortisol, explains [Julianne Holt-Lunstad](https://fhssfaculty.byu.edu/FacultyPage.aspx?id=jh67), a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. In occasional bursts, cortisol gins up your cardiovascular and immune systems, up-regulates your metabolism and more. That’s fine intermittently, but chronically elevated cortisol can dysregulate those same systems, contributing to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and more. **—Chronic inflammation:** We tend think of inflammation as the overheated, reddened skin around a bite or a wound. That’s part of the inflammatory process, but so is a more systemic release of blood proteins that prep the immune system to deal with danger or injury. As with cortisol, loneliness-related stress can cause inflammation to become chronic, says [Dr. Robert Waldinger](http://www.massgeneral.org/doctors/doctor.aspx?id=18879), director of Harvard University’s [Adult Development Survey](http://www.adultdevelopmentstudy.org/). And as with elevated cortisol, that can lead to a host of diseases. **—Poor diet:** Not everyone who spends a lot of time alone eats a pint of ice cream straight from the container and calls it dinner. But people who live together are likelier to cook together or go out to for meals together — and to put more thought into what they eat, too. Choosing and preparing your meals carefully is less likely when you’re alone and lonely — as many studies, including [ one in the _International Journal of Eating Disorders_,](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eat.20221/full) have shown — especially if you’re trying to medicate sadness or depression with food. **—Too much booze:** There are few things that are better at preventing you from pouring yourself just one more than having someone around to ask you if you really need one more. It’s far too much to say that loneliness drives people to drink, but people are likelier to practice moderation in all things when they’re accountable to someone else. As with food, if loneliness leads to depression, excess drinking can be a quick but dangerous route to trying to feel better. This is especially so among people who are middle-aged and older, according to a [2016 study in the _Journal of Aging and Health_](http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0898264315589579). **—Too little exercise:** Life on the couch binge-watching TV can look awfully tempting when there’s little else to keep you engaged. But it’s a bad go-to when the loneliness is constant. Holt-Lunstad says that [exercise](http://time.com/collection/guide-to-exercise/) is one of the most effective ways to address loneliness-related gloom. Even a brisk walk can make a significant difference — not least because it puts you in the company of other people. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Thousands of years ago, we evolved to actually depend on social connection. In our early prehistoric days, if you had more social connections, you were more likely to be able to rely on others to protect yourselves from predators. The social connection became protective in a way. This became baked into our nervous system. So much so that, these days, in our current if we are feeling socially disconnected that place us in a physiologic stress state. Loneliness Is associated with a reduction in life span that's as severe as a reduction in life span that you see with smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It's more severe than the reduction of life span associated with obesity. when I first went into medicine. I didn't think I'd be thinking about or talking about loneliness. But I quickly realized the most common pathology or illness that I was seeing Was in fact, not diabetes or heart disease. It was, in fact, loneliness. Sometimes it was the result of chronic illness. Sometimes it was the result of other stressors in their life like discrimination or violence. Sometimes it was just being away geographically from the people that they had grown up and known and trusted We have people who have thousands of friends on Facebook, thousands of connections on LinkedIn, thousands of follows on Twitter. They live in densely populated cities. They live in high rise buildings that have hundreds of other residents, yet they feel profoundly alone. [ MUSIC ] Mobility is a huge factor now. Families don't stay together because people change jobs and change cities with a frequency that was unheard of 40, 50, 60 years ago. So Millennials are no longer in their families of origin. [ MUSIC ] Most of them are living on their own and it can be fairly lonely. [ MUSIC ] As a reaction to this loneliness, the United States is seeing a trend of co- housing developments catering to all ages. TIME. [ MUSIC ] These ideas like Co- housing, really build in to our daily lives more of the connections that have withered away [ MUSIC ] I struggled a little bit when I first arrived here, just because it was my first time Living totally by myself, paying my rent, getting my groceries, cleaning my own room. And kind of coping with that loneliness has really been facilitated through this co- space. What we were trying to do was create a neighborhood in a building. The units all have a kitchenette, private bathroom, and queen beds. We balance that in a very tiny 200 square foot unit with 6, 000 square foot of shared space. We, as humans, build off of each others' emotions. Someone's angry and yelling at you next to you, that changes your emotional state. And vice versa. When you walk into a room that has a high energy, has people thinking creatively, it's contagious and it gets in your state of mind and changes your emotional level. Addressing loneliness is a collective responsibility, there's no single law or regulation that we can put in place that's gonna address loneliness [ music ] It's the decisions we make in our day to day lives that impact whether or not we and the people around us are lonely. If you are feeling lonely, recognize that you are likely not the only one. Create some sacred space without your phone. It impacts our ability to be fully present, to have deeper conversations, and to truly listen. At the end of the day, when you look at the data behind loneliness, you listen to this. Stories of people who are struggling. You're left with one inescapable conclusion. 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