"I have studied loneliness for 20 years", the well-known doctor raises the alarm: It can cause premature death

It was early morning in the spring of 1969 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jeremy Nobel went downstairs to the waiting room after getting ready for school. He found his father sitting on the couch, completely pale and clearly in pain. He told Jeremy, who was just 15 at the time, to wake his mother to help him. The ambulance arrived moments later, put an oxygen mask on his father's face and took him to the nearest hospital. It was this moment, the last time he saw his father alive, as he died of a heart attack at the age of 47.

After his father's death, Jeremy felt helpless, but continued to attend school and hang out with friends. He experienced what he calls it"spiritual loneliness". He constantly wondered what his life was worth and if he could create a future. He had never talked to his friends about his father's death.

" Loneliness was deep inside me ", he says. Looking back, Jeremy says that day was defining for everything that followed. He graduated from Harvard Medical School, and now, 50 years later, he has written a book to help anyone who may be going through the same circumstances. "Project Unlonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection" is the title of his book, which was released last month. In short, the book is like a manual to get rid of the feeling of loneliness and insecurities. The latter greatly affect our mental health.

But why is this book so important?

Because he comes fixed at the right time! This year, experts say that lonely people have reached alarming numbers in the United States, calling the whole phenomenon an "epidemic" or "public health crisis." It is said that the pandemic greatly influenced the increase in cases of this type, but even before it, many American adults expressed that they were experiencing loneliness.

Sometimes it's normal to want to be alone, but an attempt to be isolated from others most of the time causes not only anxiety, but also cardiovascular problems, dementia, stroke, depression and even premature death. According to some statistics released in October, it was said that this had become a global problem, as one in four people, from 140 countries analyzed, suffered from loneliness.

Jeremy Nobel says that “loneliness is not a disease, but a state of mind, an emotion. ” He points out that the feeling of loneliness is about missing something, it's like being dehydrated but not wanting to drink water. "You can die from this thing," he adds. He has studied this kind of condition in people for 20 years, so much so that he managed to write about it. The idea to turn everything he had learned into a book was born in the 1980s when he was in Boston, while working as a doctor. His work with patients of different ages and profiles made him realize that loneliness was "taking over American society".

For Jeremy, the way to escape loneliness is through art. He says that when he visited an art exhibition in 2022, he felt completely different. Studies show that creativity helps create social connections.There is a unique connection between art and health!

A big reason why people don't open up about loneliness is that they feel judged, which keeps them from getting the right help. But the pandemic served one thing:It made all the people feel lonely, together. Maybe now, people will find it easier to talk about what they experience.