Language Patterns Reveal Body's Hidden Response to Stress

"Language Patterns Reveal Body's Hidden Response to Stress"

Written by: Jo Marchant

I chose to read and analyze this article by Jo Merchant because I have suffered from extreme anxiety since I was 15 years old. I thought this article would be interesting because I wanted to know what truly does trigger the body's response to stress. From personal experience, I have seen how much stress impacts my overall health and well-being and I have always been curious to see just how much stress really can impact us. After reading this article, I wasn't surprised to hear how much stress alters our health but was shocked to hear how researchers have started to study how stress impacts gene expression. I thought that it was interesting how language in particular can influence gene expression and can predict the body's responses better than how we actually feel. I can see that how we consciously feel could be an unreliable indicator of how much stress really impacts our health because everyone can handle stress in different ways and sometimes we don't know how much stress really is affecting us or we have a hard time relating that impact to others.

Jo Merchant wrote about this new way to discover the biological stress triggers and how language can show us the impact of stress on gene expression. Researchers performed a study in which the asked 143 volunteers to wear audio recorders which would switch on every few minutes over a couple of days. A psychologist, Matthias Mehl, analyzed and studied the language used by these volunteers. Mehl specifically studied their use of nouns and pronouns and how their use changed based on specific life circumstances and situations. Mehl described that typically a person would use less pronouns or, "function words", when faced with crisis. The researchers then compared their language to their white blood cells of 50 genes known to be influenced by stress. 

The results of the study were: 

"They found that the volunteers’ use of function words predicted gene expression significantly better than self-reports of stress, depression and anxiety. People with more stressed-out gene-expression signatures tended to talk less overall. But they used more adverbs such as 'really' or 'incredibly'. These words may act as “emotional intensifiers”, says Mehl, signifying a higher state of arousal. They were also less likely to use third-person plural pronouns, such as 'they' or 'their'. That makes sense too, he says, because when people are under threat, they may focus less on others and the outside world."

I thought this article was really interesting because researchers have found a new, innovative and scientifically proven way to help identify gene expression. Language has always been known to show who we truly are but who knew that it could also show our gene expression and biological stress? I think it is truly fascinating how stress can play such a significant role on our physical health and can impact our overall well-being. I think it is also amazing that stress can alter gene expression and lead to evolutionary changes.

Citation: http://www.nature.com/news/language-patterns-reveal-body-s-hidden-response-to-stress-1.22964