How loneliness can affect your health

Loneliness affects our health. People with less social connections have disrupted sleep patterns, altered immune systems, greater inflammation, and higher levels of stress hormones. There is an association between loneliness and heart disease, stroke risk, and cognitive decline. But loneliness isn't necessarily the result of poor social skills or a lack of social support -- rather it is caused in part by a heightened sensitvity to social cues, perceiving ambiguous social cues negatively and reacting by withdrawing into oneself and essentially perpetuating the problem.