Did you know that spending extra time with grandma could be KILLING HER? (Not really, but maybe she’s better off watching re-runs of “Golden Girls” and “Matlock”.)
A comprehensive new study of nearly 400,000 older folks receiving care in their homes has found that lonely older adults had an 18-to-23% LOWER risk of dying within a year compared to “non-lonely” seniors.
The study was conducted in Canada, Finland, and New Zealand, and the participants all had nurses visiting their homes to help them with daily activities, like bathing, dressing, and managing medication.
Loneliness was common for people in this situation, with between 16% and 24% reporting feeling lonely.
Scientists tracked them for one year to see who died and when, while controlling for dozens of mortality factors, including age, gender, health conditions like cancer and heart failure, cognitive function, and pain levels.
There are two things worth pointing out:
1. The researchers say there’s a chance that “social” seniors with deteriorating health may be less likely to report feeling lonely, because they’re “too ill to recognize or articulate their social needs.”
2. And not everyone faces immediate health risks due to loneliness. There could be “quality-of-life aspects” of social isolation that lead to lonelier people being more resilient than you’d expect.
