Listen and read 25: Immunity from being alone - Thấm Tâm Vy

Nội dung text: Listen and read 25: Immunity from being alone - Thấm Tâm Vy

1. LISTEN AND READ 25 suspicious, the mere presence of others is not enough to restore the status quo. Something else is needed, too. Solitude and its consequences In search of that something Dr Cole carried out—this time in collaboration with Sonja IMMUNITY FROM BEING ALONE Lyubomirsky, a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside—a series of Random acts of kindness can prevent a downward spiral into loneliness experiments that encouraged healthy people to direct simple acts of kindness towards their fellow creatures: things like running an errand for an elderly neighbour or helping LONELINESS IS BAD for your health—certainly as bad as being obese, and possibly a colleague with a computer problem. Participants had their blood drawn in order to as bad as being a moderate smoker. So, in these days of plague, when enforced solitude examine their myeloid responses. Those directed to show kindness to others on a is the order of the day in many places, how to stop solitude turning into loneliness is a weekly basis had precisely the opposite gene-expression activity to that previously seen pressing medical question. in the lonely by Dr Cole and Dr Cacioppo. One part of the answer is to try to understand the physiology of the change. And that has, for the past few years, been the objective of Steven Cole of the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr Cole began his work with a study he published in 2015, in collaboration with John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago. The pair led a team of psychologists, neuroscientists and immunologists who found that the pattern in people’s blood of immune cells called myeloid cells is notably different in those who score as “very lonely” on loneliness tests compared with those who do not. Lonely people have unusually low numbers of a type of myeloid cell that generates what are known as interferon responses, which hamper viral replication. This makes them particularly vulnerable to viral infections. They also have an abundance of a second type of myeloid cell, one that promotes the activity of genes which drive Dr Lyubomirsky now picked up the baton. In collaboration with Dr Cole and with inflammation—and it has been known for years that those who feel lonely experience Megan Fritz, a colleague at Riverside, she repeated the study, but with a twist. Instead more inflammation than those who do not. of looking only at participants’ myeloid responses, she also asked them specific These correlations are intriguing, but do not explain which comes first, the loneliness questions about loneliness. or the myeloid response. Dr Cole and Dr Cacioppo addressed that question by As she and her colleagues reported to this year’s conference of the Society for repeatedly measuring perceptions of social isolation in individual volunteers, while Personality and Social Psychology, held in New Orleans in February, they found that in simultaneously tracking, from blood samples, their gene-expression patterns and other the case of loneliness, the saying about it being more blessed to give than to receive is changes in their physiology. They found that, initially, volunteers’ feelings of isolation true. Asking lonely people to perform acts of kindness to others significantly reduced coincided with an increase in their inflammation genes’ activity and a concomitant the offerer’s feelings of loneliness, as well as the myeloid response that drives increase in the circulation of immature immune cells, called monocytes, that are inflammation. Also, and perhaps portentously given the meeting’s timing, Dr Fritz and involved in inflammation—and which are also known to travel into the brain and Dr Lyubomirsky reported the preliminary results of a second study. This compared the promote anxiety. They noted, too, increased levels in the brain of signalling molecules effect on a lonely person’s feelings of acts of kindness he or she performed face to face associated with both inflammation and behaviours such as social withdrawal, feelings of with those performed online: donating money to a gofundme effort, for example, or suspicion towards the outside world and a tendency to act more defensively by making writing a thank-you note to a friend. decisions that involve few risks. That, of course, promotes further feelings of loneliness. The study’s results suggest that online kindness has the same beneficial effect as the Which, in turn, trigger a further myeloid response. And so on. face-to-face variety. And that could help to address Dr Cole’s fears of a post-covid It seems, therefore, that though loneliness starts with solitude, it can quickly take on a loneliness epidemic. No doubt (though this was beyond the scope of these studies) physiological life of its own. Dr Cole thus worries that the enforced isolation, brought merely having contact with others while staying in isolation is beneficial to those at risk about by current circumstances, of those who are already living alone may create in of loneliness. But asking lonely people to use those means to commit random acts of many people a state of chronic loneliness that is difficult to escape from when things kindness to others might go beyond this, and be just what the doctor ordered. start returning to normal. [From The Economist US Edition, 18.042020] Notes: Dealing with this will not be a simple matter of allowing people to socialise once - myeloid cells = tế bào tủy - interferon = tê bào ức chế virus - concomitant = đồng phát (cùng xảy ra) - picked up the baton = take up the charge: tiếp nhận trọng trách again. Because the myeloid feedback loop makes those affected more defensive and - portentously = as a sign of warning; điềmbáo trước Thẩm Tâm Vy, April 18th, 2020 LISTEN AND READ 25 .