Julianne Holt-Lunstad

And loneliness is serious.

So research by Julianne Holt-Lunstad shows that psychological loneliness is as bad for your health.

I'm going to get more positive.

I'm just going to share this quickly.

Here's a little refresh on how.

A 2010 study conducted by a professor of psychology and neuroscience, Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, found that loneliness or having weak social ties were linked to a higher risk of mortality comparable to the effects of smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Basically, being lonely is just as bad for your health as chain smoking.

Follow-up studies done in 2015 and 2017 confirmed that loneliness and social isolation increased the risk of early death potentially more than other well-known risk factors like obesity and physical inactivity.

Yeah, that you just have to tough out or endure, like having a bad day.

But the physiological research they cite, specifically the landmark work by Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, reveals a much darker reality.

This blew my mind.

Her research shows that chronic loneliness and social isolation have the exact same physical health impact on your mortality as smoking 11 to 15 cigarettes a day.

And here's what I think becomes even more interesting, because social connection itself is incredibly important for health.

And in my latest book, The Hardiness Effect, I discussed the research where Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, they published a landmark meta-analysis in the journal PLOS Medicine involving 148 studies and more than 308,000 people.

And across those studies, people with stronger social relationships had around a 50% greater likelihood of survival during the follow-up period compared to people with weaker social relationships, right? Now, before anybody edits this into a reel saying, "Paul Taylor says drinking gives you a 50% survival advantage," that's not what I'm saying.

The health association is with social connection, not with alcohol, but alcohol can help facilitate it, right, on occasion.

Yet Dr. Cook emphasizes that the impact of loneliness content depends on the viewer's mindset.

Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, explains that while loneliness can negatively affect mental and physical health, being alone isn't inherently bad.

The problem arises when isolation becomes chronic.

Holt-Lunstad highlights that loneliness occurs when there's a gap between desired and actual social connections.

That's very significant.

Julianne Holt-Lunstad at BYU spent a couple of decades synthesizing research on this social connection we're talking about here and its relationship with survival.

So her meta-analyses demonstrate that people with strong social relationships have a 50% greater likelihood of survival across follow up periods than people with weak social relationships.

That's a big number.

Connecting with a human is very different than connecting with that gadget.

So Julianne Holt-Lunstad did a landmark study which showed that social isolation carries a huge significant mortality risk.

Even more risky than smoking cigarettes is isolation.

Can you believe that? Yeah.