In our efforts to feed the dragon, the quest to eliminate sleep has veered toward the surreal. Once confined to coffee and tea, caffeine is now showing up in topical sprays that promise the rush without the crash, soap that says it’ll give you a buzz in the bath, stockings from Australia that keep you perky and (supposedly) eliminate cellulite and toothbrushes that wake you up while cleaning your teeth. Not to mention the plethora of food products that now contain caffeine: Beer, marshmallows, “perky jerky,” lollipops and bottled water are just a few examples.

Hence the cycle of sitting up in bed, listlessly refreshing our email (a recent Pew study found that 83 percent of millennials sleep with their phones nearby) even when it’s way past our bedtime and we really should put our computers and phones down.

Research shows that every time we check our email, Twitter feed or Facebook timeline and find a new piece of information, we get a shot of dopamine—a chemical our brains release to simulate pleasure.

So reading in bed with an iPad, he says, or any other backlit device, makes it harder to fall asleep at night and makes you more tired the next day.

Modern technology, which seems particularly adept at messing with our sleep schedules, is certainly a large part of the problem.

Indeed, our classic eight-hour-night only dates back to the invention of the light bulb in the late 1800s. Historians believe that before the dawn of electric lighting most people got plenty of sleep, and practiced what they call “segmented sleep,” snoozing for several hours in the first part of the night, when darkness fell, then waking in the middle of the night for a few hours of eating, drinking, praying, chatting with friends or maybe even canoodling, before ducking back under the covers again until morning. The arrival of electricity, argues sleep historian A. Roger Ekirch, led to later bedtimes and fewer hours of sleep overall.

Our Sleep Problem and What to Do About It

(Researchers Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have found that men’s life expectancy benefits from marriage more than women’s do.)

The support offered by a caring friend can provide a buffer against the effects of stress.

In a study of over 100 people, researchers found that people who completed a stressful task experienced a faster recovery when they were reminded of people with whom they had strong relationships. (Those who were reminded of stressful relationships, on the other hand, experienced even more stress and higher blood pressure.)

Depression. Loneliness has long been commonly associated with depression, and now research is backing this correlation up: a 2012 study of breast cancer patients found that those with fewer satisfying social connections experienced higher levels of depression, pain, and fatigue.Decreased immune function. The authors of the same study also found a correlation between loneliness and immune system dysregulation, meaning that a lack of social connections can increase your chances of becoming sick.Higher blood pressure. University of Chicago researchers who studied a group of 229 adults over five years found that loneliness could predict higher blood pressure even years later, indicating that the effects of isolation have long-lasting consequences.

A survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research of 5,000 people found that doubling your group of friends has the same effect on your wellbeing as a 50% increase in income!

And hanging out with healthy people increases your own likelihood of health—in their book Connected, Christakis and Fowler show that non-obese people are more likely to have non-obese friends because healthy habits spread through our social networks.

The research is clear and devastating: isolation is fatal

Similarly, Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones research calculates that committing to a life partner can add 3 years to life expectancy

Conversely, the health risks from being alone or isolated in one's life are comparable to the risks associated with cigarette smoking, blood pressure, and obesity.

There is compelling evidence that strong relationships contribute to a long, healthy, and happy life.