For many, the past five years have seen loneliness creep into their lives like a slow, thick fog.
As surgeon general, Vivek Murphy, MD, declared loneliness an epidemic, comparing its effects to smoking nearly a pack of cigarettes every day. A combination of COVID stay-at-home orders, lives spent largely on screens, and the evolution of remote work has frayed our social fabric in new ways, with a recent Gallup poll reporting that as many as 52 million Americans continue to struggle with loneliness.
What is loneliness doing to us? One answer may be sourced from Antarctica.
New research shows the negative, yet reversible, impact of spending time in isolated, confined and extreme environments—such as an Antarctic research station. Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, a professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry and David R Roalf, PhD, a research assistant professor of Behavioral Neuroscience in Psychiatry, both of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, published their findings in the journal npj Microgravity.
