The new study, presented on Saturday January 19 at the annual meeting of the Society of Personality and Social Psychology (Society for Personality and Social Psychology), reveals that people who are lonely have a reactivation of latent virus that people with a great social life. So that lonely people are more likely than others to produce inflammatory substances in response to stress, a factor involved in heart disease and other chronic diseases.

"This indicates that the immune system is a bit misplaced," said study researcher Lisa Jaremka, a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University

The results revealed that the more lonely was the participant, the higher the levels of anti-cytomegalovirus in blood and cytokine interleukin-6 after a stressful conversation. This cytokine is important for short-term healing as it promotes inflammatory processes. However, when reacting too easily cytokines, inflammation can be harmful. Chronic inflammation has been linked to heart disease, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and even suicide attempts.

People who feel lonely and they tend to react much worse to negative events in their lives, according Jaremka. Lonely people experience more stress in their daily lives, which can cause chronic stress, which in turn alters the immune system.

The solution of the problem is more difficult to advise leaving lonely hearts to make friends, is easier said than done. But if you could find out how loneliness affects health, you can search for treatments to break this partnership.

The study should not be seen with total pessimism. The upside is that those who feel close to their friends and family can deduct your health is likely to receive positive energy of those relationships.

Picture By Creator:Alexander Mann (oil on canvas) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons