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Lonely hearts club: Cornell study links loneliness, premature aging, heart disease

Futurity.org today reports still more reason to keep that Match.com profile up to date. When studying the responses to social stressors and comparing the results, Cornell boffins discovered that the responses of lonely young adults mimicked those of non-lonely older adults. In other words: the lonely don’t act their age, but are in the process of growing older before their time.

The study found that, while older adults had predictably higher resting blood pressures and longer recovery times – normal effects of aging, but ones that put the subject at greater risk of heart troubles – the lonelier younger adults increased these measures beyond what is considered normal. In fact, cardiovascular recovery times in lonely younger persons stretched into two-hour periods.

So don’t wonder why those backed-up, lonely people in your life get so pissed off so quickly and smolder for so long! Give ’em a little latitude and once they’re getting laid steady, they’ll be all set.

By Tommy Belknap

Owner, developer, editor of DragonFlyEye.Net, Tom Belknap is also a freelance journalist for The 585 lifestyle magazine. He lives in the Rochester area with his wife and son.