Loneliness, Toxic Relationships and Health

Article Update On:

January 21, 2026

Published On:

June 24, 2024

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The pillars of health are what we are generally referring to as diet, exercise and rest; however we seem to overlook the way in which we relate to one another.

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Individual relationships however affect our health and life expectancy to a great extent.

You will come to know about the Dunbar number and how lonely people atrophy the brain and how toxic relationships hurt us.

Dunbar’s number.

Interacting with others appears to be normal to us and that is why we do not notice the high level of intricacy of interactions with others. Engaging in a conversation is enough to stimulate many areas in the brain.

It is necessary to understand the words and other person detect the body language to find out what they are feeling. Meanwhile, we have to plan our reply and modify our personal behavioral language.

Socialization gets increasingly complicated with the growth in the size of a group. The fact that one lives in a group means that he maintains a form of social accounting among himself and the other members.

We have to keep in mind the favors that we owe or those due to us, the commitments that are to be conducted and the level of reliability of each member.

As well, we have to keep a mental map of what is happening to the social order, who is related to who.

We also need to change our approaches of behavior when communicating with each of the subjects in relation to their specifics, our mutual history, and the knowledge of their own relations and interests.

Loneliness, Toxic Relationships and Health.

Living with other people means making a consensus and working on various projects. It is this immense complexity that restricted the size of groups in the ancient societies.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar learned that, correlatively, the mass of the neocortex of each form of life bore a direct relation to the size of its social group.

Regarding humans, he also found that the total number of social ties our brain is able to follow without getting overloaded with it is somewhere around the 150 mark known as the Dunbar number.

The apparent evidence of this hypothesis is confirmed by the recent researches who noticed that the size of the gray matter in the area of the brain connected to social perception is linked with the number of people we communicate with.⁽¹⁾

study for brain — A study published in Proc Biol Sci stated that hypothesis, observing that the density of gray matter in areas of the brain related to social perception

Loneliness atrophies the brain.

Mental ability is much needed in socializing with other people.

Research with rats shows that the rats that cohabit with others in the cage have enlarged hippocampi as compared to the ones that are raised separately.

Conversely, in case rats which grew up together are denied company, after several months they experience a decrease in the volume of their brains.⁽²⁾

study on brain — A study published on Exp Neurol stated that synaptic plasticity and neurogenesis in the brain are affected by environmental stimuli

In humans we are not able to repeat these experiments due to purposely obvious reasons. The truth is that solitary confinement is regarded as the most inhumane form of punishment in prisons and it is even regarded as a torture measure to many.

But we have natural experiments to confirm the very same impact of social isolation in human beings.

Such research, as an example, was conducted to study the brains of eight researchers prior to months at a scientific station in Antarctica.

Upon their re-emergence, the seahorses were 7% smaller and this is with them not being totally isolated. Your brain was correspondingly cut down as you lost so many members of your social circle .

It was most probably facilitated by other factors, i.e., the increased amount of time spent in the house and the repetitiveness of the Arctic setting.

Overall, the outstanding sophistication of social interaction makes it an effective neuronal lubricant , which when minimized increases mental deterioration.

Loneliness increases stress.

Being alone harms us physically in numerous different ways. Firstly, the brain recognizes loneliness as a threat in the present, which creates more stress. Loneliness meant death in a wild life.

In one of those studies, participants were asked to report their feelings of isolation at various times of the day. Besides taking notes of this information, they were also required to collect saliva sample.⁽³⁾

Upon judging the results, the researchers noted that there was a significant association between episodes of loneliness and the rate of cortisol in saliva .

The one outcome of stress is to suppress the immune system and this would attribute to the reason loneliness leads to illness.

The effect of toxic relationships.

Socializing is a two-edged sword. It brings us the best pleasures in life, as well as the most stressful things.

On the positive note, the state of our relationships is the greatest indicator of the perception of happiness, as well as an excellent stressor, or as psychologists call it, an emotional buffer.

Those who are most satisfied with their personal relationships at 50 are also the healthiest at 80 according to a means of study conducted at Harvard.⁽⁴⁾

Relation with others will balance the good and reduce the bad. When you looked deeper into your memory you are bound to find that the best times were those that you shared.

Conversely, toxic relationships are bad to every sector of our health .

Individuals that indicate lower quality of their intimate relationship have greater illness rates in the subsequent years.

Distressing marriage raises blood pressures of the couple. Moreover, they have an increased amount of their inflammatory cytokines and heal more slowly.

Depression is also predisposed by conflictive interpersonal relationships.

After all, no good company is better than bad company.

Loneliness vs. Social isolation.

Such measure as social isolation is objective as compared to the amount of interactions we have in relation to others. Loneliness however, is relative. Social isolation is a thing of measurement whereas loneliness is just a feeling.

The connection between them is quite obvious. Social isolation also makes someone feel lonelier, but at different levels each individual needs depending on his type (that is, in the introvert-extrovert continuum).

Developmental background also defines how connected social individuals would like to be.

Social isolation is linked to more cognitive decline although the connection is statistically weaker as compared to loneliness. There is a benefit of relating with others whether you realize it or not to mind.

The thing is, the loneliness does not only depend on how many social relations we have, but also on how we define them. Being in the crowd without sharing anything we enjoy with other people can make us feel lonely.

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