It has been well known, going back centuries, nay, millennia, that what we ingest determines our health. And not just dietary, but what we feed our minds. If what we see, if what we read, is healthy, then our entire body benefits. If what we hear is healthy, then our entire body benefits. Similarly, if what we read, what we hear, and what we feed our mind with is negative, then our entire body will suffer.
These lessons, though thousands of years old, are as relevant as ever today. We live in an age of binging. We can binge an entire season of a tv show in a weekend. We can binge social media, scrolling through our feeds until the wee hours of the morning. We can binge “news”, quite literally watching four separate lines of text scrolling across a screen while talking heads talk for 24 hours a day if we so chose (those 24 hours easier to stomach when the “news” fits our world view). And it all has last effects on our minds and in turn, our overall health.
But being able to doesn’t mean we should. We have known for years now that social media algorithms are designed to show us the things we react to. And the more we use social media, the more finely tuned the algorithm becomes. The more we react (comment, share, like) to the things that trigger our stress, the more that type of content shows up in our feed. Before long, we (should) realize that we are spending your downtime “doom-scrolling”, chipping away at our dopamine and serotonin levels with each passing story. Moreover, for many of us, that downtime in our day is just before we go to sleep, which only compounds the problems by impacting the quality and quantity of sleep. Before long, the world will end tomorrow.
The same is true for anything else. Watch nothing but high drama television? Real life becomes quite tedious unless drama can be created. Slasher films? Porn? Nonstop “news” from the media outlet that best fits our political leanings? Pretty soon reality becomes distorted, a numbness to reality develops, and we spiral. Our daily lives, our relationships, and our own mental and physical health are all impacted negatively. That text from the ex, while perhaps well intended, comes across in a much more sinister light. That five minute delay in the ex returning the children takes on meanings that just aren’t there. How we feed our body impacts how we view and how we react to the world around us.
I am not suggesting we throw our phones into the trash and walk away from modern conveniences. But if we become more intentional and more aware of what we are feeding our minds and bodies through our eyes and ears, then we will have better control over what our tongues say, what our hands do, where our feet go, what our hearts trust, and what our minds think and we become healthier and our relationships become healthier as a result.
David Purvis