Loneliness hurts: Senior health about more than disease

[...] layering on that extra information better predicts whether a senior's next five years will be fairly robust or whether they're at higher risk for death or disability than just focusing on what chronic diseases they have, researchers reported Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using a government study of 3,000 middle-aged and older people, the researchers compared the medical conditions that doctors look for in the average check-up — blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, cancer — with information about psychological health, mobility, hearing and other sensory capabilities, and additional characteristics of day-to-day functioning.

[...] factoring in the extra harder-to-measure characteristics showed some seniors with chronic diseases actually were more likely to survive the next five years than their medical charts indicate.

[...] about half who by disease diagnoses alone would be considered healthy really were more vulnerable to decline, the study found.

Separately, McClinton has studied the biology behind social isolation in rats caged separately or in groups, and found the loners got more aggressive breast cancer sooner, with a worse prognosis.

The isolation triggered physiologic changes — hormones that overreacted to the stressors of everyday life, and differences in fatty breast tissue that supported the growth of cancer cells.

—Obesity seems to pose little risk to seniors as long as they're otherwise in good physical and mental health — without the diabetes or heart disease that so often accompanies extra pounds.