Telling Lies – Bad For Health?

We all learnt at our mother’s knee that telling lies is a bad, bad thing. But it turns out lying may actually be bad for health.

Lying behavior can cause anxiety, impact relationships negatively and cause production of certain negative hormones:

  • Quite simply lying can make you feel bad because of the feelings of guilt it produces. This creates the sort of internal stress that produces more of the hormone cortisol, and reduces the production of the happy hormones endorphins. Lying could actually be responsible for health problems such as ulcers!
  • Telling a lie takes a lot more effort than telling the truth – you have to make sure there are no apparent contradictions, you need to cover your tracks effectively and chances are that one lie will lead to several more in order to defend the original lie. This keeps you in a state of stress or anxiety and perhaps may therefore impact your relationship negatively.
  • Self esteem and self respect are closely connected to feelings of honesty and integrity – so that you end up feeling better about yourself when you are straightforward and truthful
  • Guilt can be a deeply corrosive thing and may make you feel sad and depressed – telling lies is bound to make a person feel guilt