Media Coverage

In an age when participation in community organizations, clubs and religious groups has declined, and more social interaction is happening online instead of in person, some young people are reporting levels of loneliness that, in past decades, were typically associated with older adults. It’s one of the many reasons loneliness has become a problem at both the beginning and end of our life span. In a study published last Tuesday in the journal Psychological Science, researchers found that loneliness follows a U-shaped curve: Starting from young adulthood, self-reported loneliness tends to decline as people approach midlife only to rise again after the age of 60, becoming especially pronounced by around age 80. While anyone can experience loneliness, including middle-aged adults, people in midlife may feel more socially connected than other age groups because they are often interacting with co-workers, a spouse, children and others in their community — and these relationships may feel stable and satisfying, said Eileen K. Graham, PhD, an associate professor of medical social sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead author of the study. Dr. Graham and other experts on social connection said there were small steps we could take at any age to cultivate a sense of belonging and social connection. Research has shown that poor health, living alone and having fewer close family and friends account for the increase in loneliness after about age 75. But isolation isn’t the only thing that contributes to loneliness — in people both young and old, loneliness stems from a disconnect between what you want or expect from your relationships and what those relationships are providing.

In recent years, mental health has become a central subject in childhood and adolescence. Teenagers narrate their psychiatric diagnosis and treatment on TikTok and Instagram. School systems, alarmed by rising levels of distress and self-harm, are introducing preventive coursework in emotional self-regulation and mindfulness. Now, some researchers warn that we are in danger of overdoing it. Mental health awareness campaigns, they argue, help some young people identify disorders that badly need treatment — but they have a negative effect on others, leading them to over-interpret their symptoms and see themselves as more troubled than they are. Jessica L. Schleider, a co-author of the self-labeling study, said this was no surprise. People who self-label “appear to be viewing depression as a biological inevitability,” she said. “People who don’t view emotions as malleable, view them as set and stuck and uncontrollable, tend to cope less well because they don’t see a point to trying.” But Dr. Schleider, an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University and the director of the university’s Lab for Scalable Mental Health, pushed back on the prevalence inflation hypothesis. She disagreed with the claim that students are overdiagnosing themselves. Awareness campaigns are bound to have multiple effects, helping some students and not others. And ultimately, she argued, the priority for public health should be reaching young people in the most distress.

A new review maps it out, finding that people are more lonely as young adults, grow less lonely as they approach middle age, and then fall back into loneliness in old age, researchers reported April 30 in the journal Psychological Science. “What was striking was how consistent the uptick in loneliness is in older adulthood,” said researcher Eileen Graham, PhD, an associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. “There’s a wealth of evidence that loneliness is related to poorer health, so we wanted to better understand who is lonely and why people are becoming lonelier as they age out of midlife, so we can hopefully start finding ways to mitigate it,” Graham said. Social isolation can increase the risk of premature death to levels comparable to daily smoking, according to the U.S. Surgeon General. “Our study is unique because it harnessed the power of all these datasets to answer the same question — ‘How does loneliness change across the lifespan, and what factors contribute to becoming more or less lonely over time?’” Graham said. All of the studies were conducted prior to the pandemic, which has made loneliness even more pronounced, researchers said. Graham said the dip in loneliness during middle-age might be because people that age have many demands that require more social interaction — like being married, having kids and going to work.

Loneliness has been a big topic in health over the past year, with the U.S. surgeon general. Now, new research is breaking down when people are the most likely to feel lonely — and what other risk factors might also be at play. “Loneliness is a growing concern in the aging population,” study author Eileen Graham, PhD, associate professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, explained. But Graham’s work found that loneliness is more common in younger adults too. Here’s what’s behind this — and what other risk factors to be aware of. In older adulthood, it can be difficult to maintain social connections, especially if you move or “snowbird” someplace away from home. Graham points out that middle adulthood is “a uniquely complex and busy time” for many people. Gallagher agrees. “If you have kids, you have to be social because of them,” she says. “You inevitably end up talking to people and making playdates, where you socialize.”

Therapeutic sound “baths” have been around for a few decades, but they have grown in popularity over the last five years. During a sound bath, participants are immersed in tones and vibrations from instruments like gongs, chimes, bells and singing bowls. Sound can affect both our physical and mental health, said Nina Kraus, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University and the author of “Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World.” “It’s underrecognized because it’s invisible.” Kraus added. For example, few people realize how much background noise — an air-conditioner or a leaf blower — can affect how we feel, she said. Kraus said a number of systems within the body play a role in how we process sound, affecting how we think, how we feel and how we move. Sound is also deeply linked to memory, she said, so it may affect you emotionally and psychologically.

Moderate drinking was once thought to have benefits for the heart, but better research methods have thrown cold water on that. Guidelines vary a lot from country to country but the overall trend is toward drinking less. “There is a trend towards recommending less and less alcohol that comes with the emerging data that we’re seeing, that a low amount of alcohol can be harmful,” says Amanda Cheung, MD, assistant professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The degree of alcohol that will cause problems, is still to be determined. We do know for sure that anything that is more than moderate can cause a lot of different diseases.”

A Kentucky man with Stage 4 cancer was going downhill fast when a set of donor lungs became available. But it turns out those lungs were damaged, not suitable for transplant. Not giving up, Northwestern Medicine doctors decided to repair the lungs outside the body. Once healthy, surgeons breathed a sigh of relief before transplanting the organs and saving a life. Chemotherapy could no longer keep the cancer at bay and the man could barely breathe through his diseased lungs. At Northwestern, doctors offered an idea: Use a set of damaged, donated lungs to cure his disease and give him the ability to breath again. Ankit Bharat is chief if thoracic surgery at the Canning Thoracic Institute. “The donor lungs developed a lot of blood clots and they were not usable. They were not functioning very well,” Bharat said. Thinking outside the box, the team treated the diseased lungs in a box clearing the potentially deadly blood clots outside the body. Young Chae, MD, is with medical oncology at Northwestern Medicine and associate professor of medicine in hematology and oncology. “During surgery, we resected a total of 30 lymph nodes and we haven’t found any lymph nodes that contain cancer cells,” Chae said. “So this tells us that this is a type of cancer that is limited within the lung tissue.”

Atrial fibrillation, a common cardiac condition that raises the risk of stroke, is increasingly affecting the health of people under the age of 65. For years, experts thought that A-fib, a type of irregular heartbeat, primarily occurred in people age 65 and older, and that younger people with the condition most likely wouldn’t develop other cardiac issues, however new research is proving otherwise. Nearly one in five people in the study who had A-fib also had obstructive sleep apnea, which is a significant risk factor for the condition. People with sleep apnea stop and restart breathing in the night; they struggle to get sufficient rest. The condition, which often goes undiagnosed, is tied to a range of cardiovascular issues. There is also a correlation between how much alcohol people consume and the likelihood they will develop A-fib, said Dr. Bradley Knight, the medical director of electrophysiology at the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. Smoking cigarettes and vaping are also linked with a greater risk of A-fib, Dr. Barnes said.

First, it’s important to note that most at-home hair removal devices are not lasers. They are usually intense pulsed light devices or IPL for short. It works exactly like it sounds – intense light is pulsed to the hair follicle, which disrupts hair growth. While the mechanism of action is similar to laser hair removal, it is less powerful and takes more sessions to get the desired result. Dr. Carolyn I. Jacob, MD, FAAD, an associate clinical instructor of dermatology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago explains that lasers that target blond, red, gray or white hair have not been developed yet, however, strides have been made so that those with darker skin types can successfully undergo the procedure. It depends on the person, but people generally see results within 6-10 treatments. As previously mentioned, the devices available for use at home are not as powerful as the devices you would find in a dermatology office, and therefore more treatments are usually needed.

A leading trade group is asking companies that make melatonin to voluntarily adopt child-deterrent packaging and other improvements to how their products are packaged and labeled. Melatonin is a hormone that is widely used as a sleep aid. In recent years, approximately 11,000 infants and young children have visited the emergency room after accidentally taking melatonin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last month. The guidelines call for packaging that’s harder for young kids to open, specifically for melatonin sold in flavored form. That includes gummies or chewables that might be appealing to kids, especially little ones who might think it’s candy or even vitamins. Nia Heard-Garris, MD, MBA, MSc, is a researcher at Northwestern University and a pediatrician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. She says parents should definitely talk to their kids’ pediatricians before giving them melatonin – especially if they’re considering using it in the youngest kids, like preschoolers, because it’s easy to give them too much. She says even in older kids, melatonin use should just be very occasional. But that should also prompt a talk with your kid’s pediatrician, she says, because “occasional” can be subjective. “You tell me that you’re using it three times a week, and I’m like, that’s more than I want you to be using it,” Heard-Garris says. “What’s going on? You know, let’s talk through what’s happening, and then we can kind of get to the root of the problem. If it’s once a year, once every four or five months, maybe that’s less of a red flag.”