Lying & Your Health - ABC 33/40 - Birmingham News, Weather, Sports

If you want to better health-- stop lying.

There are mental and physical health benefits in telling the truth.

The University of Notre Dame's new science of honesty study shows participants who significantly reduced their everyday lies complained less of headaches, anxiety, sore throats over 10 weeks.

A local psychologist explains that lying contradicts what we really believe and what we're saying or how we're acting.

It creates what's called "Cognitive Dissonance-- an internal feeling of discomfort.

Psychologist, Dr. Holly Deemer say, "Stress can be an eternal set of circumstances or it can be something from within like this dissonance.and when we have stress our bodies react with a change in neuro-transmitters, hormones chemicals and then just courses throughout our entire body, so every major organ system is going be affected."

Dr. Holly Deemer says, Internal stress from lying can cause cardiovascular problems, back pain, insomnia, and panic attacks, just to name a few.