Loneliness Can Hurt More Than the Heart
Cover via Amazon JANE E. BRODY I now know why I gained more than 13 kilograms in my early 20s: I was lonely. I had left for school and a job in the Upper Midwest and I knew no one. I filled my lonely nights and days with food, especially candy, cookies and ice cream. I could not rein in my eating until I returned to New York and my family, and began dating my future husband. Loneliness , says John T. Cacioppo, an award-winning psychologist at the University of Chicago , undermines people’s ability to self-regulate. In one experiment he cites, participants made to feel socially disconnected ate many more cookies than those made to feel socially accepted. In a real-life study of a middle-aged and older adults in the Chicago area , Dr. Cacioppo and colleagues found that those who scored high on the University of California, Los Angeles , Loneliness Scale, a widely used assessment, ate more fatty foods than those who scored low. “Is it any wonder that we turn to ice cream o...