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Just thinking about a secret can affect your health and well-being

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Psst. Can you keep a secret?

Well, the average person has 13 secrets, of which five have never been uttered to another soul.

And the fact that people are keeping so many secrets may be affecting their health by causing stress, sleeping problems and wrinkles, according to a recent study from Columbia University in New York.

Just thinking about a secret appears to be more harmful than the secret itself, says the study's lead author Michael Slepian.

"We found that when people were thinking about their secrets, they actually acted as if they were burdened by physical weight," Slepian told The Atlantic magazine. "It seems to have this powerful effect even when they're not hiding a secret in the moment."

The most confidential thoughts people have never shared involved romantic or sexual desires for another person other than your current partner, sexual behaviour and lies.

And it's not like people are actively trying not to spill the beans.

"We actually don't encounter many situations where we have to hide our secrets relative to all the times a secret will just come into our thoughts, and intrude upon our thinking," said Slepian.

In past studies Slepian has conducted on secrets, participants reported that their minds would wander to secrets more than dealing with a situation where they had to hide a skeleton in their closet.

In fact, only thinking about concealing secrets had an effect on a person's health.

"The bad news is that even when you don't have to hide your secret, you might still frequently think about it to the detriment of your well-being," Slepian said. "But the good news is, if what's most harmful is your thinking about the secret, if we could get you to think about it less, or change how you think about it, we could mitigate that negative effect."

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