By the way . . . a social life nourishes the brain

THERE is a wealth of data confirming that loneliness can be detrimental to health — and may have as significant a negative effect as a diet deficient in essential nutrients.

Studies suggest that social isolation plus increases in blood pressure and reduced sleep quality in lonely people can both cause depression and worsen it.

Depressive illness is a major risk factor for many aspects of physical health, including heart disease and, if it’s not identified and successfully treated, it leads to an earlier death.

The brain controls most of what happens in the body — and we need social interaction to feed it.

Warm social contact is as vital a nutrient for the brain as iron, zinc and vitamin D are for the body.

Just as salt, sugar and preservatives are no replacement for nourishing foods, neither is online communication nor phone calls a replacement for face-to-face contact and the human touch.

If you’re living alone, socially isolated and lacking human contact, then a voice or a face on a screen is at least something — but it is second best and lacks certain vital ingredients that are hard to define, and even harder to measure. In essence, it is not real contact. Social isolation is a powerful risk factor for both illness and death, with the greatest negative consequences among the elderly, the poor and ethnic minorities.

The Covid pandemic has added to the loneliness of many, another reason why the reverberations will continue to spread long and far.

The duty of all of us is, when possible, to take the trouble to return to face-to-face contact and to avoid sliding too easily into the world of online and telephone care.