What Happens to Your Body When You're Thinking?

By Arlin Cuncic Updated on July 17, 2019 Medically reviewed by Steven Gans, MD

A thought is just words in your brain that cause you to do something.

What Is a Thought?

You probably think of a thought as something that you tell yourself. In fact, your thoughts also affect you physically.

• Stress (or negative thoughts) can worsen physical illness

• Fear can lead to increases in certain chemicals that prepare us for the "fight or flight" response

• Thoughts start chain reactions that allow us to contract our muscles

Thoughts and Emotions

What about the emotional effects of your thought? Your thoughts can influence the neurotransmitters in your brain. Optimism is linked to better immunity to illness while depressive thinking may be linked to reduced immunity.

Regulating Your Thoughts

Your thoughts are linked to your emotions in a bidirectional way. Whenever you have a thought, there is a corresponding chemical reaction in your mind and body as a result. This is important to realize because it means that what you think can affect how you feel. And by the same token, if you are feeling poorly, you can change that by changing how you think.

Thoughts are physical entities in your brain (and not spontaneous outside forces that don't connect with your body).

What this means is that if you want to start changing your thoughts, you need to be aware of the triggers of your thoughts and also the patterns of thoughts that you have in response to those triggers. Get very clear about the triggers of your thoughts and you will have the power to change your emotions and your health.

Change Your Thoughts and Change Your Life

Much love!

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