Too often, those who experience loneliness and isolation suffer in silence and hesitate to ask for help. Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) Commission on Social Connection released its global report, From Loneliness to Social Connection. It connects loneliness with over 871,000 deaths a year. How can wellness policies help to strengthen our social connections and combat the rising rates of loneliness? This edition of The Global Wellness Brief provides actionable strategies to build far more socially connected communities. READ MORE
The unprecedented emphasis that younger generations place on wellbeing is a major paradigm shift, and one that suggests a very bright future for the wellness industry. All over the world, and especially in higher-income countries, younger gens have an appreciation very different from their parents of what success looks like. In the simplest terms, they value wellness above wealth. A recent EY global study, charting 18- to 34-year-olds in 10 countries around the world, reveals the profound shift: a majority prioritize mental and physical health as the top two measures of their future success, while money, contrary to previous generations, moves to their third priority. For most young Americans and Europeans, salaries are no longer the gold standard that defines achievement. It’s rather how well they feel and the meaning in their lives, a mindset that is spreading to young adults across the world.
In Pursuit of Wellness, produced for the GWI by BBC StoryWorks, is a thoughtful branded series that asks what it truly means to be “well” and celebrates the ways that destinations and innovators from all over the world are helping people transform their wellbeing. Building on the success of the previous series, the just-released third series features 12 stories, spanning films and articles around the topics of Mind, Body and Space. They depict everything from the very unique wellbeing approaches at destinations from Sri Lanka to St. Lucia to a UAE-based architect working to transform the human experience by reimagining design through a wellness lens. WATCH THE NEW SEASON HERE.
GWI’s website (www.wellnessevidence.com) is the only resource dedicated to the medical evidence for wellness approaches.
Biophilic design and Breathwork have recently been added to the site. And, in addition to our key medical databases, we’ve just added the AI-powered search tool, Semantic Scholar, to help users discover even more scientific research for each of our 36 wellness modalities.
A 2025 study from Imperial College London, analyzing 183,000 adults and 2,400 children, found that those who had bad dreams once a week or more had shorter telomeres, associated with faster cellular aging. They also found that those who experienced regular nightmares were three times more likely to die before the age of 70 compared with those who did not––concluding that nightmare frequency may be a stronger predictor of premature death than smoking, obesity, poor diet or lack of physical activity. The researchers note that the release of the stress hormone cortisol during bad dreams, and the disruption of restful sleep which upsets the body’s overnight cellular repair processes, could play roles in the accelerated biological aging. But the researchers note that future studies are needed to determine whether treating nightmares could actually slow biological aging and reduce mortality risk in the general population.
Obesity will be linked to $2.76 trillion in lost GDP in 2050 because of its effects on labor force participation and productivity. 6.5 billion years of life will likely be lost globally due to premature deaths caused by obesity.
Source: McKinsey Health Institute report, May 2025
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