-It seems that your emotional state can truly effect your health. That is strange and somewhat unnerving to me. I never feel that I am, mentally, ever in great shape. There does not seem to be much research on how emotional responses alter the body's chemistry, although I found this out about social isolation and illness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_isolation
Illness and Social Isolation
When it comes to physical illness, "The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors. However, our understanding of how and why social isolation is risky for health—or conversely—how and why social ties and relationships are protective of health, still remains quite limited." -- [(Reference 2)]
The research of Brummett (Reference 3 below) shows that social isolation is unrelated to a wide range of measures of demographic factors, disease severity, physical functioning, and psychological distress. Hence, such factors can not account for or explain the substantial deleterious effects of social isolation.
However, they also show that isolated individuals report fewer interactions with others, fewer sources of psychological/emotional and instrumental support, and lower levels of religious activity. The obvious question is whether adjusting for one or more of these factors reduces the association of social relationships/isolation with health. Which factors constitute the active ingredient in social isolation producing its deleterious effects on health?
First is the idea that isolation from others is anxiety arousing or stressful in and of itself, producing physiological arousal and changes, which if prolonged, can produce serious morbidity or mortality; and, conversely that affiliation or contact with others reduces or modulates physiological arousal, both, in general and in the presence of stress and other threats to health. A growing body of evidence from experimental studies of animals and humans is consistent with this hypothesis.
A second hypothesis is that social relationships beneficially affect health, not only because of their supportiveness, but also because of the social control that others exercise over a person, especially by encouraging health-promoting behaviors such as adequate sleep, diet, exercise, and compliance with medical regimes or by discouraging health-damaging behaviors such as smoking, excessive eating, alcohol consumption, or drug abuse.
Another hypothesis is that social ties link people with diffuse social networks that facilitate access to a wide range of resources supportive of health, such as medical referral networks, access to others dealing with similar problems, or opportunities to acquire needed resources via jobs, shopping, or financial institutions. These effects are different from support in that they are less a function of the nature of immediate social ties but rather of the ties these immediate ties provide to other people.
-So apparently, if you isolate yourself socially, you may die...That's exciting to me in more ways than one. Like I said earlier, technology makes us into human hermit crabs. We have our spaces we feel comfortable in and only venture out when we need to. Maybe, just maybe, it's only me.
-But it seems like there is still a question here. What is it about isolation that causes these physical responses? Is it something on an emotional level or a physical one? A little more research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_isolation
Emotional isolation is a term used to describe a state of isolation where the individual is emotionally isolated, but may have a well functioning social network.
Population based research indicates that one in five middle-aged and elderly men (50-80 years) are emotionally isolated (defined as having no-one to confide in). Of those who do have someone to confide in eight out of ten confide only in their partner. Men having no one to confide in are less likely to feel alert and strong, calm, energetic and happy. Instead, they are more likely to feel depressed, sad, tired and worn out.
In a Swedish study approximately one in four prostate cancer patients were found to be emotionally isolated despite of widely available psycho-social support offered to cancer patients in Sweden. That emotional isolation was found to be at least as prevalent in male cancer patients as among men in general indicates that psycho-social support in its present form may not get through to men. This is of great concern since many prostate cancer patients live under emotional stress owing to the cancer and its treatment including waning sexual function and urinary and bowel symptoms. Additionally, prostate cancer patients are faced with a stressful “patient trade-off” choosing between different treatment options or living with the cancer to avoid stressful treatment side-effects.
-So, whatever kind of personality you are I guess it's safe to say, "you will die if you don't have friends." How did we get so lucky?
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