Daily HealthBeat Tip

Lonely

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Loneliness is not just a bad feeling. It may be bad for many people's health. Researchers say middle aged and older people are more likely to have high blood pressure if they're lonely.

The researchers looked at blood pressure and what 229 Chicago-area people were feeling. Louise Hawkley of the University of Chicago says that, the more lonely people were, the higher their blood pressure was. At the extremes:

"If you compared the least lonely with the most lonely, you could have as much as a 30-millimeter difference in blood pressure � which is a lot." (eight seconds)

Enough that loneliness sometimes could explain why someone had high blood pressure.

She says we are social animals, so it's worth getting out to be with people we like.

Hawkley's study in Pschology and Aging was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: July 24, 2006

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