Produced by the I Lab at WBUR, Boston.

Welcome to Kind World, I'm Yasmy Lamer.

And I'm Andrea Aswahay.

So last week we talked all about meaningful gatherings.

If you haven't heard our conversation with Priya Parker, go back and listen.

She's got some great tips. But this week, we're talking about the polar opposite of

gathering. Being alone. We've all felt lonely at some point in our lives, but the

reality is loneliness is so much more than a bad feeling. It's a public health

crisis that affects more than half of adults in the U.S.

Many people feel that if they're lonely, that means that they're not likable or that they're

broken in some way. And I certainly felt that as a child. That was one of the reasons I never told my parents during all those years I struggled with loneliness.

I was in fact feeling alone.

And if we want to ultimately address loneliness, we have to figure out how to eradicate that stigma and help people

see loneliness from what it is, which is a human condition that all of us experience at some

point in our lives. This is the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Morthy, who served from the end of 2014 until 2017.

He's the author of Together, The healing power of human connection in a sometimes lonely world.

And just to make it even more clear, listen to this scientific finding Dr. Morthy told us.

So loneliness is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, of depression, of anxiety, of premature death, of sleep disturbances, of dementia, of impaired wound healing, and the list goes on.

When studies have actually looked at the mortality impact associated with loneliness, what

they have found is that that mortality impact is similar to the mortality impact scene with smoking 15 cigarettes a day

Okay, 15 cigarettes a day that is almost a full pack in one day. we were shocked when we heard this. How can

loneliness cost so much damage? Well, Dr. Murphy says it's because it puts our

...