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I now know why I gained more than 30 pounds in my early 20s: I was lonely. I had left my beloved alma mater upstate for graduate school and a job in the Upper Midwest. I knew no one and felt like a fish out of water.
现在我知道，在自己20岁出头时，为什么会猛增了30多磅体重了：我当时太孤独了。我告别了北方我深爱着的母校，来到美国上中西部边读研究生边工作。在那儿我举目无亲，感觉像是一条离开水的鱼。
I filled my lonely nights and days with — you guessed it — food. Anything I could get my hands on, especially candy, cookies and ice cream. Food filled the hole in my soul, at least temporarily.
在许多个黑夜和白天，我用吃东西来填充寂寞——估计你猜也猜得到。任何触手可及的东西我都会吃，尤其是糖果、曲奇和冰激淋。食物填满了我灵魂的空洞，至少暂时如此。
No matter how hard I tried, I could not rein in my out-of-control eating until I returned to New York and my family, and began dating my future husband.
不管我怎样努力，都没法摆脱业已失控的暴食，直到我回到纽约，回到家人身边，开始跟我未来的丈夫约会，这一切才停止。
Loneliness, says John T. Cacioppo, an award-winning psychologist at the University of Chicago, undermines people’s ability to self-regulate. In one experiment he cites, participants made to feel socially disconnected ate many more cookies than those made to feel socially accepted. In a real-life study of middle-aged and older adults in the Chicago area, Dr. Cacioppo and colleagues found that those who scored high on the U.C.L.A. Loneliness Scale, a widely used psychological assessment, ate substantially more fatty foods than those who scored low. “Is it any wonder that we turn to ice cream or other fatty foods when we’re sitting at home feeling all alone in the world?” Dr. Cacioppo said in his well-documented book, “Loneliness, ” written with William Patrick. “We want to soothe the pain we feel by mainlining sugar and fat content to the pleasure centers of the brain, and absent of self-control, we go right at it.”
据芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)获奖无数的心理学家约翰·T·卡奇奥波(John T. Cacioppo)说，孤独感会影响人们的自我调节能力。他援引了一项试验：感觉自己与社会脱节的参试者，相比觉得受社会接纳的参试者，所吃的饼干要更多。卡奇奥波曾和同事们在芝加哥地区做过一项研究，参加试验的是中老年人，他们发现那些在加州大学洛杉矶分校孤独感量表（UCLA Loneliness Scale，一项广为使用的心理学量表）中得分较高的人，比起得分低者，所吃的高脂食物要多得多。卡奇奥波与威廉·派特里克(William Patrick)合著有内容翔实的著作——《孤独感》，在书中他写道：“坐在家中，感觉自己与世隔绝，在这种时候狂吃冰激淋或其他高脂食物，这有什么好奇怪的？我们希望通过将糖和脂肪注入大脑的愉悦中枢来纾解心中的苦闷，在此时我们毫无自制力，直接将手伸向食物。”
He explained that lonely individuals tend to do whatever they can to make themselves feel better, if only for the moment. They may overeat, drink too much, smoke, speed or engage in indiscriminate sex.
他继续解释说，只要能让自己好受点，孤独的人们可以做出任何事情，哪怕只会感到片刻慰藉。他们也许会暴食、酗酒、抽烟、飙车，或者滥交。
A review of research published in 1988 found that “social isolation is on a par with high blood pressure, obesity, lack of exercise or smoking as a risk factor for illness and early death, ” Dr. Cacioppo wrote.
回顾1988年发表的一篇研究，卡奇奥波发现，“与世隔绝的感觉，与高血压、肥胖、缺乏运动、吸烟一样，构成了致病或早死的危险因素。”
Even without indulging in unwholesome behaviors, Dr. Cacioppo and others have shown that loneliness can impair health by raising levels of stress hormones and increasing inflammation. The damage can be widespread, affecting every bodily system and brain function.
卡奇奥波和其他研究者发现，孤独的人们就算不会沉缅于不健康的行为，但孤独仍会导致人体的压力激素水平上升，加剧炎症反应，进而影响健康。它可以对身体产生各种伤害，影响身体的各个系统和大脑功能。
Lisa Jaremka, a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University, reported in January at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology that people who are lonely have higher levels of antibodies to certain herpes viruses, indicating more activated viruses in their systems. In another study, she found higher levels of inflammation-inducing substances in the blood of lonely people.
俄亥俄大学(Ohio State University)博士后丽莎·雅雷姆卡(Lisa Jaremka)在1月份的人格和社会心理学协会年会上做了一份报告，指出孤独的人对某些疱疹病毒可产生较高水平的抗体，这意味着他们体内含有更多活性病毒。她在另一项研究中发现，孤独的人血液中含有的致炎因子浓度较高。
Chronic inflammation has been linked to heart disease, arthritis, Type 2 diabetes and even suicide attempts, Dr. Jaremka noted. People who are lonely also react more strongly to negative events and perceive daily life as being more stressful, which can depress the immune system.
雅雷姆卡博士指出，慢性炎症与心脏病、关节炎、II型糖尿病，甚至自杀企图有关。孤独的人在应对负面事态时，也易于做出更激烈的反应，并且认为日常生活压力重重，而这会抑制免疫系统。
Loneliness can even influence how genes are expressed, Dr. Cacioppo has found. Loneliness predicted changes in DNA transcription that in turn dampened the body’s ability to shut off the inflammatory response, he reported. A study by Dr. Carla M. Perissinotto and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, assessed loneliness among 1, 604 older adults and followed them for six years. Those who were lonely were more likely to develop difficulties performing activities of daily living like bathing and dressing, using their arms and shoulders, climbing stairs and walking. Loneliness was also associated with an increased risk of death during the study period.
卡奇奥波发现，孤独感甚至会影响基因表达。他指出，孤独感会预示DNA转录的变化，而这反过来会抑制机体关闭炎症反应的能力。加州大学旧金山分校(University of California, San Francisco)的卡拉·M·佩里西诺托(Carla M. Perissinotto)和同事们对1604名老年人的孤独感进行了评估，随访持续了六年。那些孤独的老人更有可能难以进行日常活动，比如洗澡和穿衣，使用胳膊和肩膀，爬楼梯和步行。在研究期间，孤独感与死亡危险上升也有联系。
It’s not surprising that loneliness has also been linked to cognitive decline. A Dutch study published last year in The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery &Psychiatry found that participants who reported feeling lonely — regardless of how many friends and family surrounded them — were more likely to develop dementia than those who lived on their own but were not lonely.
不出人们所料：孤独感与认知功能减退也有联系。《神经病学、神经外科学与精神病学杂志》(The Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery &Psychiatry)去年刊登了荷兰的一项研究，研究发现感到孤独的参试者——不管他们身边事实上有多少亲友陪伴——相比虽然一个人生活，但并不觉得孤独的人，更有可能患痴呆症。
The nearly 2, 200 participants, ages 65 to 86, were followed for three years and had shown no signs of dementia at the study’s start. About half lived alone, and 20 percent reported feeling lonely. After adjusting for other factors that are linked to cognitive decline, like age, feeling lonely was linked to a 64 percent increase in the risk of developing dementia, according to Tjalling Jan Holwerda of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam.
阿姆斯特丹自由大学(VU University)医学中心的特亚林·简·赫尔威达(Tjalling Jan Holwerda)介绍说，这项研究调查了近2200名年纪在65岁到86岁间的老人，随访三年，在研究起始阶段所有人都未出现痴呆症症状。其中约半数独居，20%的人表示感到孤独。在排除了其他与认知功能减退有关的因素，比如年龄后，研究发现感到孤独，可使患痴呆症风险增加64%。
This is not proof that loneliness causes dementia; the reverse could be true. People whose cognitive abilities begin declining may withdraw from others, the authors suggested. On the other hand, loneliness may result in “a lack of sensory and cognitive stimulation, ” which in turn reduces levels of nerve growth factors in the brain and may contribute to dementia.
这并不能证明孤独可导致痴呆，但反之可以成立。研究作者发现，认知功能开始减退的人可能会渐渐淡出社交生活。另一方面，孤独感可能导致“知觉和认知刺激缺失”，降低大脑中的神经生长分子水平，进而导致痴呆症发作。
The Dutch study, among others, suggests that how people perceive their situation may have a stronger impact on health than whether they live alone and lack social connections. Divorced people have reported feeling lonelier in a bad marriage than they do being single. And people who live alone may still have a large network of friends and family that helps to keep loneliness at bay.
荷兰进行的这项研究和其他调查显示，相比独居和缺乏社交纽带，人们对个人境遇的感知可能会对健康产生更剧烈的影响。离异人群表示，身处不幸的婚姻中，比独身更让他们感到孤苦。而独居的人或许拥有着一个庞大的亲友团，帮助他们击退孤独感。
But according to Dr. Cacioppo, having many friends and family members around does not guarantee immunity from loneliness if the relationships are missing a strong emotional connection. The quality of these relationships — how meaningful they are to the individual — counts more than numbers in predicting loneliness, his studies and others have shown.
但卡西普奥认为，如果社交关系缺乏强有力的情感联系，就算有众多亲友在侧，也无法担保人们能对孤独感刀枪不入。他和其他人的研究发现，社交关系的质量——也就是它对个体的意义有多么重大——比起数量，更能有效地揭示人们的孤独感。
People are fundamentally social beings who require meaningful connections with others to maximize health and well-being. Dr. Cacioppo suggests reaching out to others with “random acts of kindness”: doing something that helps them physically or emotionally, maybe something as simple as complimenting a stranger’s outfit, leaving behind the change in a coffee machine, or helping an old person carry groceries or cross the street.
人类本质上是社交生物，需要通过与他人建立有意义的联系来最大限度地取得健康与幸福感。卡西普奥建议大家可以做“随机的友善举动”，向他人递去橄榄枝：做些可以在身体或情感上有益他人的事情，哪怕只是易如反掌的小事，比如恭维一个陌生人的穿着，用完公用咖啡机后换上新滤纸，帮老人提购物袋或过马路。
Next, try seeking out social activities that help others while fostering social contacts, like volunteering in a soup kitchen, reading to the blind or assisting in a classroom. Such actions can result in what Dr. Cacioppo calls the “helper’s high, ” establish new friendships and counter a feeling of aloneness.
接下来，可以尝试参与帮助别人的社会活动，同时缔结社交联系，比如去施粥场做义工，给盲人读书，或去学校帮忙。这些行动可产生卡西奥波所谓的“帮助者高潮”，认识新朋友，同时抵御孤独感的侵袭。
“What’s required, ” he wrote, “is to step outside the pain of our own situation long enough to ‘feed’ others. Real change begins with doing.” You won’t know whether what you do will result in a genuine connection to another person unless you try.
“你需要做的，”他写道，“是从你个人身处的痛苦中走出来，去‘哺育’他人。真正的改变要从行动开始。”只有开始尝试，你才会知道自己做的事情是否能让你和别人建立真正的感情。
While I have always been outgoing, since my husband’s death I’ve tried even harder to connect with people in ways that make us all feel good. For example, on learning that an acquaintance at the Y needed pants from a store I was going to pass, I offered to get them for her, an exchange that enriched us both.
我一直为人外向，自丈夫去世后，我更努力地与别人交往，好让大家都觉得高兴。比方说，听说在基督教青年会(YMCA)的一位熟人想去一家商店取裤子，而我刚好要打那儿路过，于是我主动帮她取了，这桩小事让我俩都得到了快乐。
