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[deleted] OP t1_j82x7uz wrote

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RollssRoyce t1_j843tz4 wrote

I just want to add that a reason stress causes health issues is that your body shifts it's attention and energy away from systems in the body that heal, provide maintenance (as well as your immune system as mentioned above) so that it can put that energy toward things that help with fight for flight. Moreover, some of those fight or flight modes, like high blood pressure, can be harmful on their own in the long run. Short bursts of stress aren't unhealthy. It is the chronic, long term stress that wears on your body.

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turbozed t1_j854er5 wrote

"Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" by Robert Sapolsky is a great book that goes in depth about this topic.

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mschweini t1_j86h9oa wrote

I haven't read the book, but I thought the connection between ulcers and stress is now considered outdated, and that the current theory lays most of the blame for ulcers on helicobacter infection?

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RepleteDivide t1_j83t6j1 wrote

And just in case it isn't common knowledge, the ultimate cause of those physiological processes is the evolution of a social species. Pre-human apes became highly social as fruit-eating tree-dwelling creatures, and then as they came out of the trees and evolved over the generations as upright-standing apes, the social systems remained, and when H. sapiens evolved, the social system was still there. We need human connection because of that evolution that created our bodies, and that is where the cortisol and psychological distress vs joy comes into play.

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BizWax t1_j8416my wrote

It's inaccurate to say that the social systems "remained", as that suggests they're the same throughout our evolutionary history since first acquiring them. Our sociality has evolved along with us, and is different from that of our non-human ancestors and from the extinct species of our genus. The only thing that's the same is the bare fact of being a social species.

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Boring_Ad_3065 t1_j848s2e wrote

I mean…

Chimps get money, invent prostitution

Engaged in a 4 year tribal war

Like much of evolution, it repurposes and adds on, it doesn’t often reinvent. There’s debate around Dunbar’s number, but some agreement that a lot of us can manage about 50 active personal connections (albeit with high variability). The fact that we added in religion, culture, nations are more meta-evolutions of society (largely enabled by language and written language), not necessarily saying we’ve adapted our brains significantly from 10,000 years ago, but that social structures enabling mass cooperation were generally advantageous for production and competition.

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BizWax t1_j84qv9l wrote

You're conflating cultural evolution and biological evolution. They're qualitatively very different, and operate on entirely different time scales. 10k years ago? The first modern humans appeared 300k years ago, and we were talking about ancestors before that. Sure, you could posit that our biological evolution hasn't adapted to recent cultural evolution, but it has no bearing whatsoever on what I said.

As for your comparison to chimps: just because similarities exist, does not mean they are the same. All the similarities between chimpanzee and human sociality in the world don't erase facts like that a same/similar expression like smiling has very different meanings among chimps compared to humans. Human and chimp sociality are definitely not the same.

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RepleteDivide t1_j8729ii wrote

It's as accurate as saying that fingers remained. But the fingers are different. Yes, they are different; if anyone thought that I was saying otherwise, then... my goodness. Hopefully they speak up to voice that confusion!

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Westbrook_Level t1_j84gmzz wrote

And we seem to be trying to replace it with online socialization, to disastrous effect.

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MC_Queen t1_j847lqd wrote

At some point in history pro-social behaviors helped individuals survive and procreate. So it follows that the ones in the species who developed pro- social behaviors were the ones having babies who survived, and those behaviors passed down. Everyone alive today had ancestors who survived long enough to procreate.

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Terrorfrodo t1_j84ffmr wrote

I wonder where those people fit in who voluntarily choose total isolation and seem to be doing fine. Recently I saw a video about a guy who has been living in a hut in Siberia for 25 years, 30 km away from the closest settlement, because he "didn't like it in the village". He's probably a pretty weird guy but I doubt that his lifestyle is physically harming him.

So probably quite a few people are wired to live not as social animals, and isolation likely hurts only those who are isolated against their wishes.

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horyo t1_j859qd7 wrote

It's possible that he's isolated not just socially but also from dependence on civilization which creates physical demand for him to procure his own food and to handle the elements.

I think social isolation that's pathologic and leads to decreased activity is worsened by the convenience of civilization because then it becomes easier to avoid activity while also amassing caloric intake.

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ThrowAwayIguess2424 t1_j85b49j wrote

Love the response, and I’ll add another point that’s become more emphasized in emotional/social neuroscience over the past decade

That is that cognitive functions, like all forms of brain functions, requires use to keep the underlying neural architecture in tact and “up to par”. Neurons are energy sinks, and all across microscale (cellular), mesoscale (cortical columns, maybe think of as a type of local circuit) and macroscale (whole brain regions) levels, our neural systems consequentially rely on regular use of neural functions to decide when the energy investment is worthwhile. It is a use it or lose it principle

Cognitive functions can suffer from this fact. Cognition is highly complex, so it’s not as easy to study lack of use and cognitive ability changes as it is say lack of use of an arm and associated sensorimotor changes (there are some cool studies where they cast someone’s arm and get longitudinal brain scans), but the principle seems to persist

The final point to tie this to your question is that cognition is inherently a social and emotional function. For the longest time we acted as if these were separate brain phenomenon, but emotion is so integrated into cognitive circuits that they are no longer thought of as wholly independent (or “modular”) functions. I highly recommend Lisa Feldman Barrett’s How Emotions are Made for more on this in the context of emotion and cognition, or Luiz Pessoa’s The Entangled Brain for a whole-brain view on distributed functions

Anyway, social isolation leads to the obvious of not engaging in certain cognitive functions on the regular. But we also experience emotional disturbances in social isolation, which again, integrate directly to cognitive functions.

I’m super interested in this principle because my research in on Alzheimer’s, and a fascinating (albeit tragic) phenomenon is how quickly dementia and even mild cognitive impairment can accelerate once social isolation is entered. Often this happens as demented individuals are transferred into nursing homes. This transition is associated with all sorts of health decline, but many researchers think the social isolation and associated behavioral issues light the fire for accelerated physical and cognitive decline in such scenarios. This is of course why strong community engagement programs are important from anything like nursing, all the way up to independent living homes, is crucial

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haruame t1_j85j6h2 wrote

Do you know how remote communication (through phones etc.) differs from in person communication in this regard? Lots of people noticed a decrease in mental well being when switching into remote only communication due to covid.

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Kenna193 t1_j83vus0 wrote

Physical inactivity is the easier half of the question to answer. Lean muscle mass generally reduces risk of injury, increases bone density, increases bmr, decreases body fat, improves blood glucose levels, and helps with balance. Intense exercise can actually decrease appetite. Exposure to bright light throughout the day (during exercise for example) has also been shown to decrease appetite and increase satiety. Visceral fat can be more common in sedentary life styles and is suspected to cause pro inflammatory compounds and is correlated with many negative health outcomes.

Here is a study that I found after a quick Google that seems to give a better explanation than I have done above.

A piece from the abstract:

>Physical fitness appears to buffer against stress-related disease owing to its blunting/optimizing effects on hormonal stress responsive systems, such as the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and the sympathetic nervous system. This blunting appears to contribute to reduced emotional, physiological and metabolic reactivity as well as increased positive mood and well-being. Another mechanism whereby regular exercise and/or physical fitness may confer resilience is through minimizing excessive inflammation. Chronic psychological stress, physical inactivity and abdominal adiposity have been associated with persistent, systemic, low-grade inflammation and exert adverse effects on mental and physical health. The anti-inflammatory effects of regular exercise/activity can promote behavioural and metabolic resilience, and protect against various chronic diseases associated with systemic inflammation. Moreover, exercise may benefit the brain by enhancing growth factor expression and neural plasticity, thereby contributing to improved mood and cognition. In summary, the mechanisms whereby physical fitness promotes increased resilience and well-being and positive psychological and physical health are diverse and complex.

Edit : link

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4142018/#:~:text=Proposed%20mechanisms%20by%20which%20exercise,stress%20%5B30%2C32%5D.

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no_one_in_particle t1_j85q7zb wrote

Also physical movement helps move lymph and blood. Our heart beat pushes blood through the body but blood in the veins and lymph rely heavily on muscle contraction and one way valves.

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DonkeyKong_vs_Animal t1_j87abac wrote

Move lymph?

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no_one_in_particle t1_j8bb8an wrote

Yeah, so a small portion of interstitial fluid (fluid in-between the cells) is pulled into the lymph system. This lymph fluid runs by lymph nodes and such where it is checked for any non-self (virus, bacteria, cancer, etc) things so the immune system can basically take samples of tissue to make sure all is well. This system requires the skeletal muscles and one way valves to help squeeze it through where eventually it dumps back into the blood. It's why you get swollen lymph nodes when you are sick. They have sampled, detected a foreign object, and now have activated to recruit the rest of the immune system to neutralize the threat.

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mhmyfayre t1_j86297y wrote

Do you have a source for the quote on bright light reducing apetite? I am very interested in the qualities of bright light but have not heard this claim before

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iprocrastina t1_j85t1ms wrote

Someone already answered the part about physical activity so I'll tackle social isolation.

There's multiple factors at play:

  1. Humans are social animals and require social bonds. Loneliness is meant to force you to socialize same as hunger is meant to force you to eat, thirst is meant to force you to drink water, and pain is meant to force you to tend to injuries.

  2. This evolved because in prehistoric times being shunned by your tribe was more or less a death sentence. If you didn't have anyone looking out for you it was going to be very difficult to survive. Obviously the consequences for social isolation have gotten a lot less extreme modern times, but you're still at a disadvantage. If you have someone living with you you're less likely to die from things like slipping in the shower, having a medical emergency at home, choking on food, etc. You'll also have support if you become unable to take care of yourself.

  3. Because of all this, being lonely is inherently stressful. Stress activates your fight or flight response. Chronic stress keeps that system active long term which results in chronic inflammation which results in a lot of bad health outcomes.

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[deleted] OP t1_j837cpf wrote

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NoobimusMaximas t1_j84mueq wrote

This is a pretty well researched area and there is some well established data available on the topic that establishes the mechanisms that link worklessness and inactivity, to poor health outcomes. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians have put out a position statement and paper, along with recent data updates that explain some of this.. Worth a read!

https://www.racp.edu.au/advocacy/division-faculty-and-chapter-priorities/faculty-of-occupational-environmental-medicine/health-benefits-of-good-work

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Outside_Sprinkles_72 t1_j89hhg9 wrote

  1. Poor nutrition: Long-term physical inactivity and social isolation can lead to poor nutritional choices, which can lead to chronic health diseases.

  2. Lower immunity: Social isolation and physical inactivity can cause a weakened immune system, which can make a person more vulnerable to disease.

  3. Hormonal imbalances: A lack of physical activity and social activity can cause hormonal imbalances in the body, which can lead to chronic health conditions.

  4. Stress: Prolonged periods of physical inactivity and social isolation can lead to increased stress levels, which can have negative impacts on physical and mental health.

  5. Disrupted sleep: Long term physical inactivity and social isolation can lead to changes in the body's circadian rhythms, which can disrupt the body's natural sleep cycle and lead to chronic health issues.

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[deleted] OP t1_j82qk60 wrote

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SynbiosVyse t1_j83ij9q wrote

It is well established that bots commenting on Reddit are negatively impacting the experience.

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electric_ionland t1_j84r8tq wrote

This is a whole bot network that hit the sub with ~100 account overnight. No point arguing with them.

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[deleted] OP t1_j82qwmp wrote

Sorry, I didn't make it clear in the title. What I meant was what particularly about the long term inactivity or isolation causes the increased risk of the conditions you mentioned. Is it because certain chronic inflammatory pathways are activated that causes actual tissue and cell damage because the immune system begins to target our own bodies? Some sort of immune system dysregulation?

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electric_ionland t1_j838ilk wrote

This was written by a chatbot. Don't take any of what was said as verified information.

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RareBeautyEtsy t1_j85odrw wrote

Off-topic: How do I identify pieces written by a chat bot? Sorry, I’m old, and I really don’t know what a chat bot is I think it’s an AI generated article, but googling it gives me so many responses I’m not really sure.

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electric_ionland t1_j85pd41 wrote

Yes in that case we are talking about AI programs. The most well known at the moment is OpenAI Chat GPT. They produce very realistic sounding answers but those are often innacurate or straight up made up. Spotting them is not always easy but they often use the same writing style where they will restate the question in the first sentence. They use a lot of connecting adverbes like "however", "similarly", "therefore" or "overall". They will often use passive voice and very general sentences like "It is well established that...". The main thing is that after you see a few of them you can recognize the style.

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[deleted] OP t1_j84depe wrote

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