At CBHS we help you manage your health challenges. We believe in offering you the services, support and tools you need to live your best life.
Our Better Living Programs are available to support eligible members towards a healthier lifestyle. Each Better Living Program is subject to its own eligibility criteria.
Contact us for more information and to confirm your eligibility for a program.
Want to be healthier? Write everyday
Looking to make you’re daily writing more meaningful than an obscure Facebook post or Tweet? Then get yourself some paper, a pen, and prepare for better health!
Expressive writing can help overcome trauma and stress
While it may seem counter-intuitive, writing about traumatic and negative experiences has a positive affect on both physical and emotional health.
What is expressive writing?
Expressive writing is intense, flow-of-thought writing, exploring deep thoughts, emotions and feelings.
Typical writing instructions for expressive writing exercises is outlined in Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing:
- Write every day for four days
- Write about your deepest thoughts and feelings about a traumatic experience you’ve endured
- Freely and deeply explore the experience, and follow whatever threads present themselves while writing
- Don’t worry about readability – the only rule is once begun, you continue writing until time runs out
- All writing is confidential
Short-term vs long-term results
Short-term: Participants initially experienced an increase in distress and decrease in mood and physical health. They also reported their writing as more meaningful, personal and emotional.
Long-term: The long-term benefits were extensive, and included:
Health outcomes
- Fewer stress-related visits to the doctor
- Improved immune system functioning
- Reduced blood pressure
- Improved lung function
- Improved liver function
- Fewer days in hospital
- Improved mood/affect
- Feeling of greater psychological well-being
- Reduced depressive symptoms before examinations
- Fewer post-traumatic intrusion and avoidance symptoms
Social and behavioural outcomes
- Reduced absenteeism from work
- Quicker re-employment after job loss
- Improved working memory
- Improved sporting performance
- Higher students’ grade point average
- Altered social and linguistic behaviour
http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/11/5/338
Writing about positive experiences can boost mood and health
After it was found that writing about traumatic experiences could improve health, the question was asked whether it’s converse was true.
The study, while significantly smaller (focusing on 90 students) asked participants to write for three consecutive days on intensely positive experiences they’d had.
In the following three months, the participants health showed:
- Enhanced positive moods
- Significantly fewer health centre visits
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656603000588
Writing helps the mind process information
When it comes to learning or taking notes, The Pen is Mightier Than the Keyboard, and there are a few reasons for this:
Keyboards come with distractions: If you’re typing, there’s a good chance you’re only a click or two or even sharing a screen to the internet – the best source of distraction in the universe. Your notepad, as primitive as it is, forces you to be present in the moment, meaning your attention isn’t drifting elsewhere.
Typing is faster than writing: Being able to write what someone else is saying verbatim isn’t as useful as it seems on the surface. When writing down information, you’re forced to process what you’ve heard into ideas and sentences that you understand in the moment and that you’ll (hopefully) understand in the future.
The physical act of writing notes has been shown to increase call-back rates, knowledge retention, and macro and micro-processing capabilities.