VIDEO – ALL THE LONELY PEOPLE –
May 25, 2025 – Elvis Presley sang it in Heartbreak Hotel and now a top voice in American health says the classic song’s chorus has become an alarming reality: Americans are feeling so lonely, they could die.
Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. Surgeon General, is warning that the negative health impacts of chronic loneliness are comparable to some of the nation’s biggest killers.
“The overall mortality increase that can be related to social disconnection is comparable to the mortality impact of smoking and obesity,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“That’s how powerful and how important loneliness is.”
He cautioned that loneliness and isolation can raise people’s risk for dangerous health conditions
Murthy astonishingly said he found that chronic loneliness is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
