Study: Keeping secrets harms your health
Many people live a "secret life" away from their characters that they show to others, or they may have desires and fears that no one knows, but these secrets can be harmful not only psychologically, but also human physical health, a new study has revealed.
Researcher Michael Slebian and colleagues from Columbia University conducted a study of more than 1,000 people from 29 countries to learn about the impact of keeping secrets on the health of our bodies.
The researchers classified the secrets into 38 groups, the most widespread of which were sexual and emotional secrets, lies, and the desire to commit theft or acts of violence.
The team found that the average person kept an average of about 13 secrets at a time, according to the British newspaper The Telegraph.
The researchers asked the study participants about the impact of these secrets on their health, to find that a person's own focus on personal secrets negatively affects health.
The researchers explained that the atmosphere surrounding the person who keeps the secret is what affects his health and mood, for example if the person sits alone he thinks about his secrets and focuses on them, which causes him to stress or may increase his guilt or shyness, more than he feels if surrounded by others.
For a deeper look at secrets and their impact on people, researcher Tom Fregens and his colleagues, in a second study from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, presented a survey of 790 adolescents, in which they found that those who kept secrets and did not tell them had physical complaints, a bad mood and a sense of loneliness, greater from their counterparts who shared their secrets with close friends or their parents