The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

How expressing your emotions or not affects your health.

A little bird told me the other day that it might not be a bad time to talk about the impact of emotions on our health,

particularly our choice to express or not express them.

I've heard people around me share that they're worn out lately, that emotions have imposed a toll,

regardless of how well they keep their own in check.

It got me thinking.

Increasingly, researchers uncover the remarkable imbrication of mental and physical well-being.

How we nourish or neglect our physical selves affects how we feel psychologically.

Likewise, the emotional terrain we traverse throughout a day, in turn,

elicits its own physiological feedback. Yet in this culture, there's a certain esteem for the

stiff upper lip. We restrain ourselves for the sake of others, our perception of their comfort

and or their opinion of us. But are we sacrificing something in doing so?

When does the polite instinct to suppress our emotions benefit us, and when does it backfire?

It's not hard to think of GROC in these instances, and this might offer one of the more

entertaining hypothetical scenarios.

In close-knit-bant society, idiosyncratic characters or strong personalities were likely

tolerated if they didn't kick up too much discord or impair the group's ability to thrive.

That said, loose cannons who chronically threw the group dynamic into chaos probably would have been a different story.

They would have had the choice to assimilate and simmer down or find a better fit elsewhere, not likely.

As a result, a certain emotional reserve would have paid off.

Yet in all fairness, society was different then.

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