Lying Can Make Your Health Suffer

Biblical lying about Joseph's cloak.

Researchers recently determined that avoiding lying can make you healthier. (As a side note, previous research has shown that the average American lies 11 times a week.)

"It's certainly a worthy goal to have people be more honest and more genuine and interact with others in a more honest way," says psychologist Robert Feldman of the University of Massachusetts. "That would be ultimately beneficial.”

Each week for 10 weeks, 110 individuals, ages 18-71, took a lie detector test and completed health and relationship measures assessing the number of major and minor lies they told that week.

Researchers instructed half the participants to "refrain from telling any lies for any reason to anyone. You may omit truths, refuse to answer questions, and keep secrets, but you cannot say anything that you know to be false." The other half received no such instructions.

Over the study period, the link between less lying and improved health was significantly stronger for participants in the no-lie group, the study found. When participants in the no-lie group told three fewer minor lies than they did in other weeks, for example, they experienced, on average, four fewer mental-health complaints and three fewer physical complaints. Mental health complaints included feeling tense or melancholy; physical complaints included sore throats and headaches.

Click here for the article.

Painting depicts Biblical story of Joseph's brothers lying about his blood-smeared tunic, by Diego Velazquez, 1630.

Laughter Again Proves to be Good Medicine

A small group of diabetes patients at Loma Linda University were shown funny programs for a year and, at the conclusion of the study, were found to be in better shape than their peers in a humor-less control group.

According to LiveScience, researchers split 20 high-risk diabetic patients ~ all with hypertension and hyperlipidemia (a risk factor for cardiovascular disease) ~ into two groups. Both groups were given standard diabetes medication. One group, however, viewed 30 minutes of humor of their choosing, while the control group did not. (Note: Unfortunately the original article does not specify if the dose was daily, weekly or what.)

By two months into the study, the patients in the laughter group had lower levels of the hormones epinephrine and norepinephrine, both considered to be measures of stress. After the 12 months, good HDL cholesterol had risen 26 percent in the laughter group but only 3 percent in the other. In yet another measure, C-reactive proteins, a marker of inflammation and cardiovascular disease, decreased 66 percent in the laughter group but only 26 percent in the control group.

"The best clinicians understand that there is an intrinsic physiological intervention brought about by positive emotions such as mirthful laughter, optimism and hope," said study leader Lee Berk.

Click here for the LiveScience article.