Wanting to eat more and loneliness: the correlation

The COVID-19 pandemic forced millions of people around the world, from 2020 and for the next two years, to deal with their loneliness between imposed closures, limited travel and often remote working. This long and difficult period, however, allowed important studies to be carried out on the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, people’s ability to adapt, the consequences on productivity and education and also on loneliness and the effects of this condition on the brain. What if there was a correlation between social isolation and changing eating habits?

Solitude and food

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This question was answered by a study conducted byUCLA Healththe University of California-affiliated public health system, says women who feel lonely show increased activity in areas of the brain associated with food cravings and motivation in eating.

How the study was conducted

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The study, published on JAMA Network Openwas conducted by a sample of 93 healthy, premenopausal women with the aim of ascertaining the effects of social isolation on the brain. The participants were followed from 7 September 2021 to 27 February 2023 and divided into two groups, on the one hand those with a higher score on the perceived social isolation scale, on the other those who, however, in the same reference period had could count on a more active social life.

The results

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UCLA researchers observed that women with higher levels of social isolation tended to have a higher fat masslower diet quality, increased cravings and reward-based and often uncontrolled eatingas well as higher levels of anxiety and depression than the other group.

All the women who took part in the study were shown it a series of images for comparison: food vs. non-food, sweet food vs. non-food, and salty food vs. non-food. Thanks to the magnetic resonance imaging performed while viewing those images, it was discovered that the women who felt more alone experienced increased activation in brain regions associated with a greater desire to eat sugary foods as well as less activation in the brain region associated with self-control of eating behaviors.

The results, he explained Arpana Guptaresearcher and co-director of the Goodman-Luskin Microbiome Center at UCLA, confirm what had already been hypothesized for some time: “When people are alone or solitary, the impact is not only on how they feel, but also on what they eat, their desire to eat and their cravings, especially for unhealthy foods.”

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How to get out of the vicious circle

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“If you have more cravings, you eat more and you may have more anxiety or depression, which can lead to eating more. This path is a vicious cycle between unhealthy eating and negative mental symptoms,” he pointed out Xiaobei Zhang, postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. The solution to get out of this vicious circle? According to the researchers, valid support could come from holistic mind-body interventions, but also from making healthier food choices.