Words can Affect Your Health
Did you know that words can affect your health? Read on to find out how words can affect your health.
by Chinyere Nwosu
March 8, 2021
We often do not pay attention to how words affect our well-being. This segment is about words and how they affect our health.
Words can change things
Our minds tend to validate words that we come in contact with often. Therefore, whatever we read, hear, or speak regularly imprint and drive our lives. The words we are exposed to more often become normal. The more we acclimatize to these words, the more power they have over us.
What do you say to yourself? Some people call themselves ‘stupid’ when they make the slightest error. Some affirm they are ‘smart and able’ whilst acknowledging the error they have made. Positive affirmations affect our mindset.
I once read about a Japanese Scientist, Masaru Emoto, who in the 1990s performed experiments on pure frozen
water. He exposed one batch to only positive words and another to only negative words. After some time, the ones that got only negative words produced ugly brown crystals, and the ones that got only positive words produced clear beautiful crystals (for details on this experiment, see The Hidden Messages in Water). This points to how much change can occur due to consistent exposure to words.
Words and the brain
Studies on the brain show that repetition is the best way to imprint something on the human mind. This is why you may forget something as important as your spouse’s birthday but still remember your multiplication table. and even as you age, you still remember your nursery rhymes. Repeating the melody makes the facts stick.
The words you see every day or hear very often become a part of you. You may be wondering why it is important to remember this. The problem with this is that it does not matter if the information is true or false. You will not only remember those words, but you will also see them as valid. There are stories about some patients’ recovery associated with positive affirmations. Therefore, what you say to yourself maybe shaping your life without you knowing it.
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How do you feel when you are around negative people?
How do you feel when you are around and positive people?
How do you feel when you are around someone who is always negative or someone that consistently complains about everything? Do you feel energized or drained? Do you look forward to meetings with such a person?
Ponder this.
Read Also:
Factors That Can Affect Your Mental Health
Can Movies Affect the Way We Learn?
Words have power
There is scientific evidence to prove that the physical world as we know it does not exist. Rather, the things that make up the world are just energy in different states of vibration. Weird, right?
Heisenberg in his works stated that atoms are not real, they form a world of potentialities rather than only one thing. Chemists and physicists have proved over time that the atom consists of pockets of energies called sub-atomic particles. So, we can say that everything is energy since everything is made of atoms.
This goes to say that words can excite the energies in us or drain energy from our bank of energies. Words interact with the energy within us. Words can uplift us or make us downcast.
What do you say to yourself?
What we say to ourselves has the power to make us or mare us. Speaking positive words to yourself can get you through very difficult situations. Henry Ford was right when he said, “if you think you can or you can’t, you are right”. What we believe begins with what we see, hear, say, and the emotions these experiences arouse in us.
Do you curse at yourself and others without thinking about what you say?
The human body and sound
The science of sound shows that sound travels through water four times faster than air. Studies of the human body also show that the body is made up of 70% water. We can infer that spoken words will travel through the human body at about 70% of the speed of sound through water.
Does it surprise you how quickly words resonate within our bodies? How quickly we get excited at good words and irritated at negative words points to our susceptibility to words and the power words wield over us. Wormwood et al, reported that affective word use in daily news coverage impacts mental health.
Therefore, words can affect our physical, emotional, social, and mental well-being.
To keep a sound mind, be mindful of the conversations that go on in your mind. Consciously select the conversations you have with people, things you watch, and the things you listen to.
Use words carefully.
Reference
Anderson, M. – How Words Affect Our Brain
Wormwood, J. B., Delvin, M., Lin, Y., Barrett, l. F., Quigley, K. S., (2018), When Words Hurt: Affective Word Use in Daily News Coverage Impacts Mental Health
Masaru Emoto – The Hidden Messages in Water