Dr. Edward Hallowell
speaker
246 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 24 Feb
Dr. Edward Hallowell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You're a terrific, terrific host.
In fact, the Surgeon General defined loneliness as the number one medical problem in the United States today. Not cancer, not heart disease, loneliness. And most people don't realize social isolation is as dangerous for early death as cigarette smoke.
Lonely is a lot different from being alone. You can be alone and not lonely. You can be alone and reading a book, listening to music, entertaining your fantasies and favorite hopes for the future, and you're not lonely. But You can also be lonely, and that's the active presence of absence. It's like you're feeling what isn't there. It's a terrible feeling. You're feeling that here I am alone.
No one's with me. No one likes me. No one cares about me. Or so-and-so died, or I miss my dog, or I wish I were back home. You feel what you're missing.
And it's a terrible feeling. It is really bad for you. In fact, the Surgeon General defined loneliness as the number one medical problem in the United States today. Not cancer, not heart disease, loneliness. And most people don't realize how bad it is for you. In fact, social isolation is as dangerous for early death as cigarette smoking. Most people have no idea about that.
If you ask them to list risk factors, they'll say cigarette smoking, obesity, genetics, don't wear your seatbelt. Nobody puts down loneliness, but my gosh, it's right near the top of the list. And if people would make it a priority to connect, I call it the other vitamin C, vitamin connect. It is the most powerful force that most people don't make use of.
I urge people, you know, if you go to the supermarket, talk to the guy at the checkout counter. He needs it or she needs it as much as you do.
Well, all of the above. When you're feeling lonely, your immune system suffers and you are putting out stress hormones that are caustic. And then what you also said, you're inclined to try to fill in the emptiness
with things like online gambling or drinking or drug use or dangerous liaisons or dangerous business deals reckless going online connecting in chat rooms where you don't know who you're talking to and it's it's really just about people trying to find a meaningful ways of connecting and um i can't tell you how many patients i've prescribed a dog for I mean, dogs are the world's great.
I dedicated my last book to dogs. I said it's no accident that God spelled backwards as dog. You know, it's dogs are the world's best connectors. And, you know, so if you have a dog, chances are you're not going to feel lonely or nearly as lonely.
And in fact, I tell people, young people, what is the purpose of growing up? What is the goal of growing up? And the answers I get are like, get into the best school you can get into, lay the foundation for making a good living. And I say, no, no, the purpose, what you want to do while you're growing up is fall in love. You want to fall in love with a person, that's fine.
But with a subject, an idea, an activity, an ant, the great... entomologist E.O. Wilson, who just died, fell in love with ants in a parking lot in Alabama because he was a lonely kid. So he went out to the field next door and started studying ants and became one of the great entomologists, professor at Harvard, author of many books.
But it was born out of his feeling lonely as a kid in Alabama, and he found his companionship in ants.
The reason people stick with loneliness is they're afraid. They're afraid of being rejected. They're afraid of being sued. They're afraid of saying the wrong thing. You know, in this age of PC, everyone's afraid to say the wrong thing. They're afraid of looking stupid. And so they hold back.
They hold back on life out of fear and they create their own little bubble, their own little prison, which is toxic.
Well, it actually is a connection. You'll get a little drip of dopamine when you do that. You'll get a little affirmation. You can wave to a stranger all clear across the parking lot. If it's a snowy day or something, you say, snowy day, and he waves back. It takes a half a second. That is a connection. It's not a lifelong connection. You'll never see the person again, but don't take it lightly.
Small talk is very big talk. Small talk is the route into deeper relationships, for sure. But it all begins with small talk. You know, the strong, silent man is a lonely man on his way to a heart attack. You know, it's not a good recipe. So make the little chitchat. Don't take it lightly. It's very, very, very important.
It is so true. It's wired into us. It's wired into our endocrine system. Even any of you listeners who've had children, the moment you give birth, either through the normal way or through adoption, the moment you become a parent for the first time, nature sees to it that you enter into a permanent state of psychosis. Your whole body changes. Your brain changes.
You fall madly, insanely crazy in love. with this little peeing and pooping machine whom you don't even know. And yet you've almost instantly become not only willing, but eager to give away your time, your money, your sleep, your dignity. And, and, you know, you gotta be crazy to do it. And you say, this is so much fun. Let's do it again.
My advice to you is maybe take that holiday as a chance to developing some kind of connection that can become meaningful. Maybe it's a time to get a dog, or maybe it's a time to go back to church or synagogue, or maybe it's a time to take up...
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