Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale (REUTERS)

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Sick? Lonely? Genes tell the tale
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young, and researchers said on Thursday they may have found out why -- their immune systems are haywire.

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Fascinating!

Certainly not a very large sample group, but I'd love to read the actual study.

Working at a library, you probably have access to journal databases whenever you please, eh?

I rarely get sick. My immune system is actually fairly good.

Yes, but being alone is not the same thing as being lonely.

Its mentioned at the end of the article the report was available free here:

http://genomebiology.com/

http://genomebiology.com/2007/8/9/R189

http://genomebiology.com/content/pdf/gb ... 9-r189.pdf

Sweet! Thanks for pointing that out. I'm so accustomed to being confined to the abstracts.

I am mildly lonely.

Yeah. I'd say I'm about the same.

I've found that by being away from people,
I RARELY get sick. When I do though, I seem
to remain so for some time.

Nonetheless, e-coli wasn't too horrible.

I don't think so. On a scale of 1-10 I'd say my aloneness is an 8 but my loneliness is only a 2, and I've always felt that way. I find it easy to be alone and not feel lonely. However, I do experience more joint and muscle inflammation than I think I should. I'm considering aspirin therapy. Inflammation is very, very bad and should always be treated, never tolerated.

Btw, who is that in your avatar? It looks like it could be you with longer, blonder hair.

How does one know that one's joints are inflamed? I get quite a bit of pain in my legs but I assumed it was due to abusing them by running too much and not taking enough days off to rest. But I know a lot of people who are able to run a lot more (distance wise) just as frequently, without pain.

And thanks! It's Claire Danes in Stardust.

I should get a good shot of my hair up sometime. It's actually pretty long, but apparently it doesn't show up in the pics I've posted because people keep saying it's short.

Pain and inflammation are virtually synonymous.

Ah. Suppose there's a price to pay for being Spartan.

The real mystery is how people reported as uniformly depressed and lonely as most Aspies could possibly have such a low rate of suicide.

Psychiatrists are starting to research the subject and many are convinced that nature has special compensating mechanisms that seem to be connected to the type of brain itself.

For neurotypicals, solitary is one of the worst possible punishments that can be imposed on them. Yet AS sufferers go for decades in the equivalent of human isolation tanks without resorting to suicide the way ordinary people do.

Recent studies identify two other special features of AS ... many autistic people in general including AS seem to produce very, very high levels of IGF1 and IGF2, which might explain how people who suffer from black, unrelieved depressions can have such strong immune systems. Especially when AS is also closely linked to chronic insomnia. How on earth can a person with no social contact and often irregular or deficit sleep patterns have an immune system as good or better than that of neurotypicals? It would have to be higher levels of GH.

It also explains the "lumbering village idiot" archetype found throughout European history and mythology. Autistics in general have extraordinary levels of growth hormone in their bodies, which is why they are feared by orderlies in institutions as "Bone Breakers" when angry and medical studies have often shown them to have more muscle mass and denser bones than ordinary people.

Normally isolation, sensory deprivation and insomnia make neurotypicals lose weight and finally kill themselves or end up in hospitals. How do Aspies go decades in their own private hells and still have healthy immune systems and bigger bones? The presence of high levels of insulin growth factor in autists goes a long ways towards consolidating all this strange anecdotal evidence into one big picture. It 's another example of how sometimes overcompensation for a shortcoming in one part of the body actually results in hypertrophy elsewhere.

I used to weight train with another autistic guy in New York city. One day, the two of us flipped over a car that was crowding us on Broadway. Nobody told us we could lift cars. We just knew we could do it. We lumbered. That's what village idiots do. It seemed natural to us.

I have believed that the resons that I didn't commit suicide half a lifetime ago were:
1. Very high IQ
2. Values (compassion) instilled by my mother
3. Insights instilled by marijuana
I don't think the lumbering village idiot model applies to me. I believe I've been sick an average or above average number of times. I've also been under the impression that the suicide rate for aspies is substantially higher than the average for the general population.