You make me so lonely baby, I get so lonely, I get so lonely I could die. Dr. Presley may have been onto something when he sang those lyrics. It turns out that there is an epidemic of loneliness — especially among the elderly — that has a significant impact on health. According to one researcher at UCSF: “The profound effects of loneliness on health and independence are a critical public health problem. It is no longer medically or ethically acceptable to ignore older adults who feel lonely and marginalized.” From the NYT: Researchers Confront an Epidemic of Loneliness.

+ There’s still a stigma around being lonely that makes patients unlikely to report it to their doctors. What will they report? Just about everything else Google comes up with. Here’s Quartz on the ways Googling our medical symptoms is making us sicker.