How bad are toxic people for physical health?
Supportive and positive social relationships with friends and family members can have many positive effects on health and mental well-being. In contrast, toxic friends or family members that are overly hostile, permanently passive-aggressive, or purposefully difficult can become huge stressors. Chronic stress has all sorts of negative effects on both mental and physical health. For example, stress research has shown that chronic stress can accelerate ageing and increase inflammation.
This implies an intriguing research question: Do toxic people not only worsen our mental health, but do they maybe also have a very real effect on biological age and accelerate the ageing process due to all the stress they cause?
A new study on toxic social ties and accelerated aging, and inflammation
A new study, just published in the prestigious scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America” (or in short: PNAS), was focused on finding out whether toxic people accelerate biological aging (Lee and co-workers, 2026). In the study entitled “Negative social ties as emerging risk factors for accelerated aging, inflammation, and multimorbidity”, the research team led by scientist Byungkyu…
