Negative Emotions

What You Feel Emotionally Becomes What You Feel Physically

Researchers have scientifically linked negative emotions (anger, hostility, resentment, bitterness, self-hatred, unforgiveness, and anxiety) to cardiovascular disease and diseases related to the immune system. Also, studies have highly correlated emotions with infections, allergies, and autoimmune diseases. Not only do toxic emotions impede the healing process, they compound the effects of sickness by adding new biochemical processes the body must struggle to overcome. This is especially true when it comes to autoimmune diseases.

75- 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians result from stress-related disorders.

The brain produces neuropeptides (chains of amino acids) and conducts them along the nervous cells throughout the body. The brain “talks” to the immune cells all over the body and in turn, the immune system cells communicate back to the brain, using neuropeptides. If your brain interprets physical perceptions as anger, fear, or depression, every immune cell of your body knows that interpretation very quickly.
When we are stressed, depressed, angry, anxious or feeling guilty, we become more prone to misinterpreting events and to thinking in a distorted way. One distorted thought tends to lead to another. Before long we begin voicing negative statements. Negative thinking and speaking results in toxic emotions that can make a person sick.
According to a study published in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, anger and other negative emotions may be triggers for an ischemic stroke. People who had strokes were more likely to have experienced anger or negative emotions in the two hours prior to the stroke. Exposure to a potential trigger could increase the risk of stroke by as much as 14 times during the two-hour period following exposure.
Research studies have documented a link between coronary artery disease and panic disorders, as well as between cardiovascular disease and worry. Fear has been associated with cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, digestive-tract diseases, headaches, and skin disorders.
A 25-year follow-up study involving 255 medical students found those who scored highest on hostility on a standard personality test were nearly five times more likely to die of heart disease than their less hostile classmates; they were seven times more likely to die by the age of 50.
Couples who routinely trade nasty or controlling remarks during marital spats might be harming their hearts. According to a recent study, wives who made a lot of hostile remarks had double the level of clogged arteries. Husbands who made many domineering statements had arteries that were one and a half times more clogged.
According to an expert at Penn State, negative words dominate language. Studies of 37 different languages turned up six negative words that have very similar meanings – fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame, and guilt. There was only one positive word – joy.

Choose to think about those things that evoke positive emotions within you. Reflect on them.

Sources

Deadly Emotions by Dr. Don Colbert, USA Today, New Scientist, ABC News, Science Daily, Enjoying Everyday Life – Joyce Meyer Ministries, Forgive For Good by Dr. Fred Luskin, and Washington and Shady Grove Adventist Hospitals.

These Health Tips are for educational purposes only. For additional information, consult your physician. Please feel free to copy and distribute this health resource.