IF YOU USE THESE WORDS, YOU MAY BE MORE STRESSED THAN YOU REALIZE.
Beautiful Path. The words you use say a lot about you. But a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests this goes a lot deeper—like, gene expression deep—than we think. Researchers found that subtle changes in our language may be a better indicator of how physiologically stressed we are than our own assessment of our feelings. Stress, especially chronic stress, can wreak havoc on the body. In a piece about the study findings for Nature, Jo Marchant writes about how stressful situations like living in poverty, feeling isolated or experiencing trauma can lead to chronic health issues like dementia and heart disease. Researchers have found that people living in these circumstances “also undergo broad changes in gene expression in the cells of their immune system,” Marchant writes. But it turns out our genes and our word choices tell a different, and more accurate, story about our physical str...