Improve your odds

[wishihadacat]

Okay, I admit it: I'm 56 years old and I now get copies of the f**king AARP Bulletin, but when I read the following piece it seemed to resonate with me, and its significance for anyone with HIV is obvious:

"Being lonely takes a toll on the body that seems to accelerate with age. University of Chicago researchers reported in August's Current Directions in Pschological Science that in their study of college students and of adults age 50 to 68 loneliness had little effect on the health of the younger subjects. But the older people, compared with their more social peers, had higher blood pressure, lower levels of "good" cholesterol, and higher levels of the "fight or flight" hormone epinephrine. The paper adds to growing evidence linking social isolation to problems dealing with stress, weak immunity(italics added) heart disease, Alzheimer's and suicide, says Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "There are roughly 20 large-scale epidemiologic studies now", he says, "and they all show that the more socially integrated you are, the longer you live."

I'm not aware of any similar long-term studies for the HIV+ community, but you can bet your last stock dividend check that it applies with greater force to us HIVers. Yet one more reason to get out there!

[komnaes]

A license to keep partying.. I can dig that!

[wishihadacat]

That would definitely be one way of looking at it, Shaun. 

[komnaes]

But too bad I am not the partying type...

I am starting a sunday bunch club though.. hopefully we will have up to 5-6 people to start with.

But I am not sure if "loneliness" has to only mean "lack of social interactions and activities". It's important to have friends but I wonder if loneliness is more of a state of mind. People can still feel lonely when we're surrounded by friends, whereas some people can handle being alone and still feel self-sufficient.

[wishihadacat]

That's a different issue, although a related one. Although I've opened up more about it in the last couple of years, I still reveal the fact that I'm HIV+ to  only a few close friends, and as a consequence, I can sometimes feel very apart in a roomful of people. We clearly pay a very high price for this...