Abstract
Loneliness and wisdom have opposite effects on health and well-being. Loneliness is a serious public health problem associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Wisdom is associated with better health and well-being. We have consistently found a strong negative correlation between loneliness and wisdom. The present study aimed to investigate the association of loneliness and wisdom with the gut microbiome. One hundred eighty-four community-dwelling adults (28–97 years) completed validated self-report-based measures of loneliness, wisdom, compassion, social support, and social engagement. Fecal samples were collected and profiled using 16S rRNA sequencing. Linear regression analyses, controlling for age and body mass index, revealed that lower levels of loneliness and higher levels of wisdom, compassion, social support, and social engagement were associated with greater phylogenetic richness and diversity of the gut microbiome. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis to investigate multivariate relationships extracted two composite variables. Linear regression model predicting alpha-diversity with PLS components revealed that a linear combination of all psychosocial predictors (with negative loading for loneliness and positive loadings for all others, including wisdom, compassion, social support, and social engagement) was significantly associated with alpha-diversity. For beta-diversity, compassion and wisdom accounted for a significant proportion of variance in overall microbial community composition. Findings may have implications for interventions to reduce loneliness and possibly its health-related adverse consequences. Future research should explore whether increasing compassion and wisdom may improve loneliness and overall well-being as well as microbial diversity.
Highlights
Loneliness and social isolation are important public health risks, linked to worse emotional, cognitive, and physical health, functional decline, and premature death [1, 2]
Higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of compassion, wisdom, social support, and social engagement were associated with decreased phylogenetic richness and diversity of the gut microbiome
We further evaluated the multivariate relationship of alpha-diversity with psychosocial variables, and found that the Partial least squares (PLS) component comprising of all psychosocial variables were significantly associated with alpha-diversity
Summary
Loneliness and social isolation are important public health risks, linked to worse emotional, cognitive, and physical health, functional decline, and premature death [1, 2]. The latter—i.e., persistent or chronic loneliness, rather than short-term fluctuations—is considered to be biologically toxic and is the focus in the present paper Both loneliness and social disconnectedness are independently associated with worse physical health; the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. The “microbiota-gut-brain-axis” involves bi-directional signaling between the gastrointestinal and central nervous systems and is regulated at neural, hormonal, and immunological levels [19] Alterations of these systems can result in disruptions of stress-response and behavior, from emotional arousal, affective behavior, and motivation, to higherorder cognitive functions such as decision-making [20]. Studies in humans have found that the gut microbiota is associated with personality traits, such as neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness, and psychological constructs, including subjective stress, self-compassion, affective empathy, and emotional well-being [21,22,23,24]. We hypothesized that higher levels of loneliness and lower levels of wisdom, compassion, social support, and social engagement would be associated with lower microbial diversity
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