A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness |  | Author: Dr. James J. Lynch
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Category: eBooks
In Stock
Sales Rank: 425,773
Format: Kindle eBook
Language: English (Published)
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Publication Date: June 10, 2010
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Product Description
With information technologies such as the web rapidly expanding our capacity to communicate with each other via electronic technologies, “A Cry Unheard” describes the lethal consequences of the rise of loneliness in modern life. This plague has emerged as one of the leading causes of premature death in all technologically advanced nations. Fueled by powerful social forces that contribute to the disturbance and disruption of human dialogue-including school failure, family and communal disintegration, divorce, the loss of loved ones- it is as if some electronic Pandora’ s box has unleashed and fostered an ever-spreading plague of “disembodied dialogue” in our midst. Unlike our ancestors a century earlier, we live in a world in which telephones talk, and radios talk, and computers talk, and televisions talk, and there is “no-body” there. Human speech has literally been extracted from its own biological home, extracted from the human heart, as if we could really speak from “no-place” to “no-body.” And while the lack of human companionship, the absence of face to face dialogue, and the “disembodiment” of human dialogue and loneliness has been linked to virtually every major disease, from cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, tuberculosi,s and mental illness, the link is particularly marked in the case of heart disease, the world’s leading killer. Every year, tens of millions die prematurely, no longer able to communicate with their fellow man, lonely and brokenhearted.
Drawing on a lifetime of his own medical research, Dr. Lynch outlines recent discoveries that explain how such disparate socially isolating experiences as school failure, divorce, and living alone share a common disease, a “communicative dis-ease” that literally has the power to break the human heart. Hailed by many of our nation’s leading medical experts as a pioneer, visionary, as well as THE expert in “affairs of the heart”, Dr. Lynch predicts in this seminal and groundbreaking book that “Communicative disease will come to be recognized as every bit as important as communicable disease as a major health threat." His path- breaking research on the power of human touch to affect the hearts of patients in intensive care units, (as well as the hearts of animals in laboratory settings) and his discovery that during the course of even the most ordinary conversations, blood pressure can rise far more than it does to maximal physical exercise are but a few pieces of a health mosaic depicting the power of friendships, human dialogue, and community to influence our very survival. With that rare combination of poet and scientist, he describes in moving terms the “vascular see-saw of all human dialogue- blood pressure rising when we speak to others, and falling below baseline levels when we listen to others or attend to companion animals and the rest of the natural world. He admonishes us that “exercises to improve communicative health” must be taken every bit as seriously as exercises on treadmills to improve physical health.”
School failure and other childhood experiences with “toxic talk,” as well as adults use of language to hurt, control and manipulate rather than to reach out, hear and listen to others, contribute to an unbearable type of loneliness that literally breaks our hearts. Dr. Lynch shows that when we speak to others-whether it is our own children, or those we are attempting to love- we touch their hearts as well. Echoing the time honored Biblical truth, he pleads with us to recognize the wisdom that we are indeed “our brother’s keeper,” and that failure to recognize that simple truth forces us into communicative exile, and ultimately premature death. Truly, he concludes in this moving book, that “dialogue is the elixir of life, and loneliness its lethal poison.” The choice we face is quite clear: we must either learn to live together-or we shall die prematurely, alone.
Amazon.com Review
We're a lonely society. Twenty-five percent of American households consist of one person living alone; 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce (affecting more than a million children); 30 percent of American births in 1991 were to unmarried women. These factors are linked to an increased risk of premature death, according to loneliness specialist James J. Lynch, Ph.D., who has spent almost four decades clarifying how loneliness contributes to a marked increased risk of developing premature coronary heart disease. "Mortality rates in the United States for all causes of death, and not just for heart disease, are consistently higher for divorced, single, and widowed individuals of both sexes and all races," writes Lynch in A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness. An important point in this book is that loneliness in childhood has "a significant impact on the incidence of serious disease and premature death decades later in adulthood." School failure is a major contributor to this problem. Children who fail in school are socially isolated and deficient in the language and communications skills that could help them overcome their isolation. Lynch also explores the links between loneliness and premature death, and describes the biological power of human dialogue--which, he says, is more intimate than sexual intercourse, because dialogue involves the heart, not just the body. This is not a fluffy, feel-good book. There are no quick tips, no instant relief from loneliness, no "do now" lists of activities. This book is for readers willing to delve into the subject of loneliness and health risk. Lynch wants you to understand the magnitude of the problem, which he presents in a style that is both academic (with plenty of statistics and graphs) and accessible. He also wants you to understand the complex solution: contact, companionship, and communication. --Joan Price
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