Consider This from NPR - Isolation Causes Loneliness. What Else Can It Do To Our Bodies?

Episode Date: June 16, 2020

There's a cost to staying home, too. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a neuroscientist and social psychologist at Brigham Young University, explains the toll that social isolation can take. It's been exactly three months since President Trump issued the first national guidelines for social distancing, including pausing nursing home visitors. NPR's Ashley Westerman recently checked in on her 100-year-old grandfather. Paul Westerman's wife of 76 years is in hospice care. He's alone, except for the nurses in his veteran's home. Plus NPR's Chris Arnold checks in on a Boston hair stylist going back to work. Sign up for 'The New Normal' newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station. Email the show at [e-mail]. This episode was recorded and published as part of this podcast's former 'Coronavirus Daily' format.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org. Hey, if you missed the announcement in our last episode, soon we are going to start bringing you news that is not just about the coronavirus. And in a few weeks, as part of this new plan, the show is going to have a new name. Consider this. Just to be clear, though, our coverage of the pandemic will not stop when that happens. We want to hear what you think. Our email is coronavirusdaily at npr.org. Okay, here's the show. It's getting hotter. A mask can be uncomfortable. And honestly, people are just tired. On one hand, everybody wants to open up the economy.

On the other hand, you want to make sure that people are not needlessly getting sick or needlessly dying. In Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler is dealing with a surge of new cases and hospitalizations, and he wants to require people to wear masks. But he says he can only recommend them. At this point, I can just make recommendations to the community. The governor of Texas could require masks, but he says he doesn't think he should. So the mayor says basically it's up to individual people to make a choice between wearing a mask and someone else getting sick or even dying. This community is going to have to decide just how important those lives are. Coming up, there's a cost to staying at home, too. And it's growing, especially if you're on your own.

This is Coronavirus Daily from NPR. I'm Kelly McEvers. It is Tuesday, June 16th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. A colleague of ours here at NPR, producer Ashley Westerman, recently went to visit her grandpa.

Here we are, the Western Kentucky Veterans Center. Paul Westerman is 100 years old, served in World War II. He's been married 76 years, but his wife can't be with him because she's in hospice care. So Paul is basically alone, except for the nurses in his veterans home. Ashley couldn't visit him inside. All right, so I'm up at the window and the nurse is going to give me a call. Hello. How you doing? Hi, Grandpa. How are you? You're looking well. Thank you. It's so nice to see one of you because, you know, they quarantined us and everybody.

So I'm pretty lonesome. They're just trying to keep you safe. Yeah. Yeah. How have you all been doing over there? March 16th, exactly three months ago, was when President Trump issued the first national guidelines for social distancing, which included no more visits inside nursing homes. A lot of them still don't allow visitors. And millions more people just live alone. I think if they went to work on that disease, all over the world could be working on it, be trying different things on it, you know.

Well, they are. They're working on it. The hard thing is that right now, with coronavirus, keeping the most vulnerable people isolated saves lives. In nursing homes and soldiers' homes that failed to get that right, tens of thousands of people have died. But there is a cost to the isolation, too. All right. I've got to go. It's cold out here. I'll talk to you in a little bit, all right? I love you.

I do, too. Bye, Grandpa. Julianne Holt-Lunstad at Brigham Young University studies how social connections affect our health. She told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep that isolation can affect your heart rate, your blood pressure, your stress levels, even your immune system. that people who are more socially connected have stronger immune responses and are more able to fight off a cold virus. And those that are less socially connected are less able to fight off the cold virus and are more susceptible also to respiratory illnesses. You know, once in a while I read an account of someone who lived alone for a while and they will comment on the power of touch or the power of not touching anyone for a long time. Yeah, some of the classic research has shown that infants and young children in custodial care that lacked human contact failed to thrive

and even were more likely to die. And in some of my own research, we've found that close physical contact has been linked to the neuropeptide oxytocin, which has been linked to social bonding and stress regulation. Listening to you, I'm feeling like you're describing human contact almost like a vitamin or an aspect of the diet. If you're not getting a vitamin or you're not getting any protein, that probably isn't a problem for a week or maybe even a month, but after a while, it becomes a real problem. There's an interesting study done by MIT where they found that going without food for 10 hours showed a similar neural signature as being isolated for 10 hours,

suggesting that these cravings for others, you know, for human contact, may have a real biological basis to it. Can social isolation actually kill you? Absolutely. We have good data that it increases our risk of earlier death from all causes. And the overall magnitude of this effect on mortality is comparable with the risk associated

with obesity and exceeds that of physical inactivity and even air pollution. What are some practical things that people could do to help themselves out of this situation to mitigate the harm that they're facing? The first thing that people can do is to really nurture their existing relationships by maintaining those connections as much as possible. that's virtually by video chats or telephone calls or connecting with the people who are around you from a safe distance, talking to neighbors across the street or across a balcony. And then also there's some evidence around creative expression, not just painting a painting or performing music, but writing, cooking, that these can help reduce feelings of loneliness and the distress associated with loneliness as well. That was Julianne Holt-Lunstad with Morning Edition host Steve Enskeep. Whether you have been relatively isolated or not the past three months, one thing a lot of us have in common is that we could probably use a haircut. More hairstylists are going back to work

despite the risks. NPR correspondent Chris Arnold, who is based in Boston, went to see what that's like. When you're a man of a certain age, not getting a haircut for a few months, the thinning hair on top starts whispering around, the sides stick out all crazy. It is not a good look. And it seemed kind of beyond the help of like a YouTube haircut video. So when the guy who cuts my hair, his name is Vincent Cox, when he told me that the salon he works at was opening up, I thought, well, I mean, I don't know what, what am I going to risk my health just for vanity?

All right. So now we have to come to a different section of the haircut. Okay. Yeah. I couldn't take it. I broke down and I booked an appointment. Vincent is having me hold my mask in place, but move that ear loop so he can cut behind my ear. Put your left hand over your face. The salon actually has an outdoor back patio, so Vincent's cutting my hair out there because it seems safer. We're both wearing masks. I set up these stations outside. I brought the mirrors in from home. Vince has been cutting hair for 45 years, and he's had to improvise before. He's cut rock stars' hair on airplanes. Oh yeah, I traveled with the Aerosmith, the Cars,

the Rolling Stones. That was dangerous duty too, you know, in the 70s. A different kind of dangerous. A different kind of danger. Vincent says actually he and all the other hairstylists he knows were shocked to hear that hair salons were among the first businesses opening up in massachusetts and some other states because he says it just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense i mean i would go work in an office the other guy's six feet away in a desk i'm not touching him and running my fingers through his hair right so. So, um... Yeah, like, you're cutting my hair right now,

and your fingers kind of bump my eyelid. It's like it's impossible not to... Exactly. ...to have contact. So, it's... This is not a joke. And as we talk, it becomes clear that it's really not a joke. Vincent is pretty scared.

He's 65 years old, and 80% of COVID-19 deaths have been in people his age or older. I cut my dentist's hair. He was like just warning me and telling me, Vince, don't take off your N95s. You know, my doctor, they're worried sick about me. But when the salon opened up, he couldn't collect unemployment anymore. So he felt he had no choice but to come back to work. He's sterilizing his chair and scissors, washing clients' hair himself, working 12-hour days worried about getting sick. It's been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life.

I was almost in tears the first day. I was almost in tears. I was kind of having a little bit of a breakdown. I talked to my friend, he's a retired army general. He texted me and asked me how I was doing. And I went on a rant of about 10, 15 minutes. And it was really good because a general, when he gives you a kind of a word of advice, you kind of listen, you know. And he says, Vince, just remember your friends are behind you. And so that's the best advice I've gotten. The salon owner says he's comfortable with the steps to keep employees and customers safe, spreading out the chairs inside, cutting hair on the patio, the masks, the gloves. But Vincent and stylists at other salons, too, are worried. They say they feel like canaries in a coal mine, like test subjects,

to see whether parts of the economy where you can't social distance are opening up too fast. That was NPR's Chris Arnold. A cheap drug that has been used for decades to treat arthritis and asthma might also help some of the sickest coronavirus patients. It's called dexamethasone. It's an anti-inflammatory. And one study out of the UK today that looked at more than 2,000 patients

said for those who are sick enough to end up on a ventilator, the drug did reduce the risk of death. The catch, and it's a big one, is that researchers put the word out in a press release without the underlying results yet. While the news is easy to find on social media, scientists are waiting to see the fine print. For more on the coronavirus, you can stay up to date with all the news on your

local public radio station and on NPR.org. Additional reporting in this episode by our colleagues at NPR's Morning Edition. We will be back with more tomorrow. I'm Kelly McEvers. Thanks for listening to the show. For James McBride, racism in this country has been a disease. It's been the cancer that has just been killing us. And now we want to address the problem. I mean, you can't address the cancer until you know you have it.

And these people are seeing the cancer. Author James McBride on protests, a pandemic, and his new book. Listen to It's Been a Minute from NPR.