Newest Research has shown that being an honest person is the best policy when it comes to your own health.
The John Templeton Foundation, who honoured HH Dalai Lama with a prize for His humanitarian work, funded research at Notre Dame University into the health benefits of being more honest.
Anita Kelly, leading researcher, conducted experiments over 10 weeks with 110 participants ranging in ages from 18 - 71. Roughly half the participants were asked to try to control their 'white lies' and lying in general and the other group were given no special instructions regarding truth telling.
Over the 10 weeks, the link between less lying and better
health was significantly stronger for participants in the no-lie group,
the study found. For example, when participants in the no-lie group told
three fewer white lies than they did in other weeks, they experienced
on average about four fewer mental-health complaints, such as feeling
tense or melancholy, and about three fewer physical complaints, such as
sore throats and headaches.
Anita Kelly said "We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically
reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with
significantly improved health”. It was also evident from the 'no-lie' group that personal relationships were much smoother without lying, and this also improved health. Dr. Kelly said " Participants said they realized they could simply tell the truth about
their daily accomplishments rather than exaggerate, while others said
they stopped making false excuses for being late or failing to complete
tasks, Kelly said. Others said they learned to avoid lying by responding
to a troubling question with another question to distract the person."
Try it yourself, and see if you can make a difference.
Stay Healthy!
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