A new Harvard study out today indicates that in the past several decades our general mood and sense of well-being have declined, making it harder for us to stay on what I call, in THE LAST BEST CURE, The Life Channel.
I’ve written a great deal about rising rates of stress-reactivity, and how stress-reactivity is linked to higher rates of depression, anxiety and chronic illness. What intrigues me about this new study is that it’s a subtle but telling sign of a change in how we view the world.
And not a good one.
In a review of literature in the 20th Century, Harvard researchers analyzed trends in the use of ‘mood words’ that convey joy, anger, fear and other emotions.
Here’s what they found: words conveying fear have increased markedly since the 1970s, whereas the use of other “mood words” including those that convey joy decreased. This shift has occurred during the same years that we Baby Boomers have come of age.
Researchers call this “Fear Factor increase” a “cultural trend.”
I think it’s a trend that most of us are feeling inside, too.
Here are 5 Key Facts to bear in mind about our National Stress-Disease Crisis:
1. Studies show that American’s stress levels are rising.
2. So are our rates of chronic illness, depression and pain — not just in adults but in children.
3. We are not as healthy as our parents were in mid-life, and we’re more likely than they were to suffer from chronic illness — at earlier ages.
4. Research links our higher stress levels to every imaginable disease, including inflammation, depression, autoimmune disease, heart disease and cancer.
5. Stress reactivity is as toxic to our immune system as a virus or environmental toxin, and does similar physical damage.
And here are 2 more Key Factors:
1. We’ve developed many medications (such as anti-anxiety drugs and anti-depressants) to decrease our stress reactivity and calm our sympathetic nervous system (that branch of our nervous system that activates fight or flight, and sends forth inflammatory hormones and cytokines that damage our body and cells).
2. BUT there is no known drug to help us activate our parasympathetic nervous system; that part of our nervous system which activates deep feelings of well-being, homeostasis, calm. Our portal to a sense of joy and well-being.
So. There are many drugs that help us turn down the volume of The Pain Channel. But no known drug to turn on The Life Channel.
And yet. Nature has given us a remarkable tool box to shift our nervous system to a place of well-being, calm, joy. And it is just so simple. And free. And available to us anytime, anywhere. And fully under our control.
Our brain is our Last Best Cure.
THE LAST BEST CURE (which by the way, uses the word “joy” a lot!) is my own personal journey to walk away from the “Fear Factor,” and move toward what I think I’m going to start calling the “Joy Factor,” in hopes that I can help all of you to do the same.
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Acerbi A, Lampos V, Garnett P, Bentley RA (2013) The Expression of Emotions in 20th Century Books. PLOS ONE 8(3): e59030. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059030