Monday, March 02, 2009

The Doctor Is In: Writing & Good Health

You know those TV ads where people swear that working out with their machine for only five minutes a day will give you good health and ripped abs?

They're lying.

If, however, you spend only two minutes a day writing about your emotions and do it for only two consecutive days, you will enjoy better physical health for as long as 4-6 weeks later.

And we're telling you the truth.

 These are the results reported by Chad M. Burton and Laura A. King in the British Journal of Health Psychology article "Effects of (Very) Brief Writing on Health: The Two-minute Miracle." Finally, an explanation for why middle-school girls who spend hours sobbing and writing in their diaries are so incredibly robust.

For a couple of decades, researchers have known that regular writing produces positive health benefits, as measured by the Pennebaker Inventory of Limbic Languidness (which measures 54 physical complaints). In the past, researchers used a writing sample of 15-20 minutes for several days.

What Burton and King set out to explore was the lower boundary of writing required to reap health benefits. Two. Minutes. Two. Days. That's all. Participants who showed positive effects wrote about either positive or traumatic events--both were effective. The key is that the writing contain emotional content, in effect “broaching the topic on 1 day and briefly exploring it the next” (Burton and King 1).

You can read the original paper online.
[Photo courtesy of Esther G via Flickr .]

1 comment:

Red Rev K said...

Just think of how our collective mental health would improve were we all required to write coherently for just two minutes a day. . . . Perhaps there wouldn't be the current state of affairs in our country today if the people who hold office were required to simply write down the absolute truth for two minutes a day. Perhaps those of us who voted them in would have voted differently had we written down our hopes and fears of the future immediately before entering the voting booth. Who knows? Regardless of the outcome everyone would feel better for 4 to 6 weeks!