"Episode 5: Loneliness Is As Impactful On Your Health As Smoking"

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And trust me when I say I know what it's like to make your own life difficult. Does your life feel like Groundhog Day on repeat? Welcome to the Eye of the Hurricane Podcast. Hey there, and thanks so much for taking the time to join the Eye of the Hurricane podcast today. We're going to talk about a subject that I don't think too many people give much thought to. And what's funny is when we look at the research, the damage that this particular thing does to our body equates to about 15 cigarettes a day. And the question becomes, what is it? And it's actually loneliness. So what's interesting is when they do surveys and they ask people the right questions, a majority of people feel far more lonely than they actually realize. And I think sometimes as middle-aged adults, we moved away from other people and almost all of our social interactions either go through the workplace or through our direct family. And what it means for some of us, which is really an interesting concept, is we may look at our phone and we may have 400 contacts. But if we had a problem or someone we needed to call, we would look down this list and keep scrolling and wouldn't know who that person would be. So the research on loneliness and really what it's actually doing, it's a lot more serious than what people think. So let's talk about the data. In 2010, the researchers pulled together from uh, I think it was 150 different studies and over 300,000 people. And what they tried to do was answer one simple question. And the simple question was how much does our social connection actually impact how long do we live? And the answer they found is that people who were lonely or they were just socially isolated, they were 50% more likely to die prematurely than people that had strong relationships. So when they compared that risk to other things, you know, things that we already know are dangerous, like smoking and drinking and obesity and not exercising, loneliness held its own against all of those things. So that's where the idea of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, that's kind of where that comparison came from. So if you go back a few years, the U.S. Surgeon General General at the time declared loneliness to be actually be a public health epidemic. So it's something that impacts a lot of people, though it's not on the forefront of their mind. So if we look at a follow-up study that was done in 2015, it looked at over 3 million people. And what they found was that just isolation by itself, it raised your risk of early death by almost 30%. And those people that live alone, you know, it was closer to 32 or 33%. So it's one of those things where this isn't really a feeling that researchers are being dramatic about, right? They're not, they're not overstating what it actually does. It's measurable. And the physical risk to our body through things like inflammation, um, what it does to our cardiovascular system, it wreaks havoc on the immune system. All of it responds in a way uh similar to, you can almost think of people that are lonely, even at a level that they're not, they're not realizing it, their body's responding in a way almost like there's a physical threat. So similar to anxiety and stress, you can't see loneliness, right? You can see a tumor and you can tell that you've got some kind of a problem there. But something like loneliness is one of those things that people sometimes they they chalk up to not being real, right? They minimize what the implications are of the actual condition, um, which is not an uncommon thing. And it's especially true when it comes to men, because they tend to be prideful when it comes to things like mental health and and the idea that somehow they're they're they can handle things on their own. But, you know, really, if if you're in your 40s and 50s and you're listening to this right now, um, this isn't just a young person's problem. And it's not an old person's problem. Sometimes we think it's the people that are 80 or 90 that feel like they're isolated. But what they find is midlife, it's one of the loneliest stretches of the average person's life. So what ends up happening is we end up too deep into our career and into our family. And what ends up happening is we don't have the free time that we had when we were 25. So daily life, it really turns into worrying about everybody else and and how everybody else is doing, because a lot of us feel like, you know, we're the people that are supposed to take care of other people. And what ends up happening is um, especially for busy parents, I see it all the time, right? It's it's what events do we have tonight, what practices do we have to get to? Uh, it's just run every direction all the time. And you never really give a thought of yourself and how you're feeling. So what ends up happening, happening in reality is sometimes we can't even find time for our own partners, let alone time for ourselves for any kind of outside friendships. And what ends up happening to many people over time, like I said, it's completely off the radar until one day it finally sneaks up on us. So I don't know you and I don't know specifically how you're wired, but speaking for myself personally, I keep my circle pretty small. So, in general, I would say my bucket doesn't get filled by social interactions. And I'm pretty intentional with my time. If I'm somewhere with somebody outside of things that that you absolutely have to do, I'm I'm pretty um I'm pretty specific about when I do those things because as I get older, I want to make sure that uh if I'm going to allocate my time to something that I really want to be there. But I know a lot of people that are wired differently than I am. And they really couldn't function without being around groups. And it it really re-energize them to be in a social setting. But it doesn't matter which group you're in because loneliness can impact both of us. So I think that's one of the main traps of loneliness when you look at midlife specifically, is it doesn't just show up one day and you realize, oh, I I'm I have no other connections outside of my direct family. Um, and it's something that doesn't even feel like a problem, but instead you get so used to being busy and you feel like it's a responsible thing to do because um everybody else is who you're supposed to be looking out for. So you end up in a position to where you really don't, you really don't give it any thought or pay any attention to it, which is super common. Here's why most people don't do anything about this, even once they notice it. And that's we think that friendship is supposed to just happen, right? It's chemistry, it's timing, it's luck. It's very similar to um, if we go back to being a kid and you were thrown into a classroom, uh, you know, where you have the same 25 kids for six hours a day and five days a week, and that goes on for years, you know, that's really not luck. It's it's more repetition. It's what we got used to. We sat next to the same people, we were in gym class with the same people, uh the same people were our neighbors. Um, once we realize where those friendships at the time formed, we all of a sudden realize that the entire problem of loneliness gets a lot more solvable. So it may seem odd, the fact that we're sitting here talking about developing friendships, especially if you're 50 plus. But let's talk a little bit about the research that was done out of the University of Kansas. And it was a gentleman by the name of Jeffrey Hall. And what Jeffrey studied was exactly how long it takes to build a real friendship. So in all his research, he came up with some specific numbers. So a couple of those stood out was it was 50 hours of being together that you could go from being a total stranger with somebody to being a casual friend. Then you had to invest 90 more hours, roughly 90 out, 90 more hours to have an actual friend. And it was 200 hours on top of that before someone could actually become your close friend. So that's a lot of time invested in people. You know, the most important part of his research, I felt, was the fact that hours spent with somebody didn't necessarily turn into a friendship. And one of the obvious places that this comes up is with our coworkers, for example. You know, the sometimes that barely moves the needle, and we're around them hundreds of hours. You know, we're around our colleagues. And a lot of the times, if we're being honest, we still just call them acquaintances. So the question is kind of what actually built the closeness? And what we ended up figuring out through the research, and I say we, I had nothing to do with it, but but in reading it and in his research itself, what really built that out was unstructured time. So it was it was having the conversations about nothing, it was about joking around, it was all kind of the low-stakes hangout time, if you will, that had no agenda. So I guess if you're sitting there deep down and are feeling this, or if you're thinking to yourself, really, I don't have time to go out and build new friendships at my age, that's not actually true. But what's true is you're not necessarily going to find a great friend by accident anymore. We don't end up in those positions where that happens. So when we were, you know, 12, 13, 14, we were put in that position. But now we actually have to manufacture the hours. So we have to be, it's got to be on purpose and intentional, and it's actually got to be a priority of ours. So let's talk about four ideas that we can kick around. Um, if it's something that we really want to go out and do, if we want to expand our network, if we, if we want to try to go out and possibly find some new friends and have some new experiences, what what are these, what are these ideas and how do they work? So I think the first one would be we just stop looking for a friend specifically. So I think we look for something based on the research that's recurring and consistent. So, you know, we might have a weekly uh recreational league pickup game or some kind of men's group. Maybe we're in a specific class, could even be a cooking class or something that you're interested in. Maybe you go volunteer the same day every single week. You know, so the the hours aren't gonna accumulate because, you know, you're out one night and you have a great night um showing up at the at the local bar or whatever place it may be. It's gonna be the fact that you're in the kind of in the same place around the same people following a schedule. And when you think back to the research of how you had the 50 hours, this is how that's gonna take place without you ever having to force anything. The second part of that, I think, is just lowering the bar and not being worried about developing great friendships, just allowing them to work organically. So it might be a few months until you've got a until you got a BFF, right? Which again, at 50 years old to talk about going out and finding friends sounds odd, but it's a real thing. Um, it's more about getting out of your comfort zone and being able to have new conversations with people and turning uh strangers really into acquaintances and then casual friends and then kind of seeing where it goes from there. I think the third thing is to is if we say yes before we're actually in a position where we feel like it. So the instinct sometimes when we're in our 40s, 50s, and 60s, we tend to protect the couch, you know, kind of the our our quiet nights, our alone time, um, our normal routine. I think that instinct over time is what gets people in a position to where the only people they have in their in their tribe is their immediate family. So I think, I think it's that same thing that put us kind of where we're at now. So I think accepting the invitation and or being the one to actually go out and build out the hours, right? You be the one that actually is setting this up. Because I think a lot of the times when we look at um, again, I think men specifically, we tend to be in a position to where uh we're not the ones that are actually setting things up. We're waiting for the invitation. So I think that, you know, that kind of rolls into the fourth one. And I think that's kind of the standout one there is be the one who starts the recurring uh whatever it is. So if it doesn't exist, text first. Decide on a group and and get a group together on your own. Uh, just suggest on Thursday nights we do this. And if you do that, then over time you're gonna be able to build a group that you can go and you can have fun with and and enjoy yourself. Just recently, I mean, I grew up where my uh dad and I played pool every single night. And I hadn't played in decades. And I have a friend that um when I when I relocated to a different um area for work, I had a friend that actually has a pool table. And, you know, now all of a sudden, once or twice a month, we'll just carve out a Thursday night and we'll end up listening to blues music and and shoot and pool. And I can't tell you how much fun that is just to have uh an evening where I get to go and do something that I used to absolutely love. So, you know, it's something that before I probably wouldn't have thought made that big of a difference, but it really does. It makes a huge difference sometimes when you can actually get out there and do things that you enjoy doing. In closing, this really isn't about making friends for the sake of just having plans, right? It's really about our physical life expectancy because the the data is not soft on this. I mean, isolation is doing measurable damage to our bodies right now, whether we feel it uh, or even if we admit it or not. It's just a fact. So there are a lot of people out there that want to have connection that don't necessarily um even realize that they're missing it. So it's not weak, it's not weird, it's a human need that we all have. So I wish you the best of luck, and I look forward to seeing you on the next one.