Page |43 predicted an increased likelihood of engagement. And to add insult to injury, becoming inactive, but the effects of loneliness increases sensitivity to and loneliness were independent of changes surveillance for social threats. Anxiety, in health status. Similarly, individuals low self-esteem, and fear of negative with fewer social connections (i.e., a evaluation elicit self-defensive behaviors smaller social network) were less likely and effectively tax cognitive resources to be physically active, but the effects of that would normally be available to meet loneliness on physical activity did not the demands of daily life stress. Thus, depend on the size of the social network. what might naively be thought of as a The invisible force of loneliness seems circumscribed problem—the feeling of to play a unique role in this particular loneliness and isolation—may be seen predisease pathway. by the sufferer as a world of inescapable Another commonly cited risk threat.’ factor for disease is stress. In reality, How might these cognitions and “stress” refers to a family of predisease perceptions influence physiology and pathways, each of which may be health? As Berntson shows in his vulnerable to the influence of lonely chapter, the brain regions involved in feelings. Loneliness is itself a source of emotional and perceptual processes are stress, but lonely individuals also differ intimately related to brain regions in their exposure to stressful events and involved in the regulation of circumstances. This is less evident in physiological systems. This is young adults than it is in older adults in particularly evident in alterations of the whom loneliness was associated with functioning of the cardiovascular system having experienced a greater number of in lonely individuals. In young adults, stressful life events in the past year (e.g., this alteration is apparent in increased death in the family, marital crisis, resistance to blood flow in small arteries change