Ilana Menges

Eng 1201
Professor Pedrotti
14 March 2019
Annotated Bibliography

In my essay, I intended to reveal the health effects both positivity and negativity has on a

person’s health. I want to explore the good side effects of positivity, as well as, the bad side

effects of negativity. How much can a person’s words really affect your mental and physical

state?

Collins, Ace. Sticks and Stones: Using Your Words as a Positive Force. Zondervan, 2009.

Sticks and Stones: Using Your Words as a Positive Force, written by Ace Collins and

published by Zondervan, gives many helpful tips and advice on how positivity can change your

life. Collins makes the suggestion in her book that most people often speak negatively about

themselves and others. Because of this many people become discouraged and depressed.

Ace Collins wrote this book to help others know how to become a more positive person

and encourage others. He has written over eighty books for twenty-five different publishers.

Collins is a very successful and credible writer, selling over twenty-five million copies.

I plan to use this book in my essay to prove how vital positivity is. Collins mentions how

detrimental negativity can be to your friendships and life. With deteriorating friendships and

great negativity comes depression and thoughts of self-harm. This will provide an answer to my

question: Does negativity affect your mental health?

Cornelia Herbert, et al. “My Sadness – Our Happiness: Writing About Positive, Negative, and

Neutral Autobiographical Life Events Reveals Linguistic Markers of Self-Positivity and

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Individual Well-Being.” Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 9 (2019), 2019. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02522/full.

“My Sadness – Our Happiness” by Cornelia Herbert, published by Frontiers in

Psychology, talks about how people who are depressed are more likely to speak of negative

events while using negative words. A study was conducted on 28 healthy participants and 7

depressed participants to find their emotional responses and words. The result found the

depressed participants to speak of negative experiences and using negative words.

Comparatively, the healthy participants told of joyful family stories and used positive words to

express these stories.

Herbert’s article is directed at persons with medical experience, as well as, individuals

interested in the topic of well-being. This article was written to explain the data collected from

the experiment that was conducted. Herbert is currently a student at the University of Ulm.

Additionally, she has received many awards including the G.A. Lienert Award for her academic

research and many articles published by Frontier. I retrieved the article from EBSCOhost,

making it a reliable source.

I intended to use this article’s information in my essay to explain how positive and

negative words are such a big part of a person’s life. The use of certain words can reflect their

health. The article will help me answer the question: Does positivity and negativity affect your

mental health?

Rahhal, Natalie. “One in Eight US Teenagers Contemplates Suicide, Study Finds.” Daily Mail

Online, Associated Newspapers, 26 Feb. 2019, www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-

6748061/One-eight-teenagers-contemplates-suicide-study-finds.html.
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The article, titled “One in Eight US Teenagers Contemplates Suicide, Study Finds,”

written by Natalie Rahhal and published by Daily Mail, explains the power of bullying and the

suicide rates among teenagers. The article states that students are more likely to consider suicide

if they are or have been bullied. Cyberbullying is becoming more popular among teens.

Rahhal wrote this article to make others aware of the shocking statistics of suicide among

teens. This article was written in February of 2019, making it super recent and retrieved from the

current school year. It was published by Daily Mail, a reliable and well-known publisher.

I plan to use this article to answer my question: Do negative words affect your mental

health? Cyberbullies use negative actions, words, and insults to tear down students which can

cause these students to seriously consider suicide. Cyberbullying is a grave mental problem that

many teens have to learn how to safely overcome.

Sadeghi, Habib. “The Scary Power of Negative Words.” Goop, 6 July 2018,

https://goop.com/wellness/mindfulness/the-scary-power-of-negative-words/.

“The Scary Power of Negative Words,” written by Habib Sadeghi and produced by

Goop, explains the power of words and how negative words can disrupt our body’s vibration.

The article goes slightly in depth about how a negative person can make you feel like all your

energy is “bottoming out.” He also mentions that your body is made up of 70% water and words

change the vibration of water, thus changing the cells in your body.

He designed this article to create awareness of the power of negative words and how

negativity can affect a person. Because Sadeghi is a Doctor of Osteopathy, he is a credible and

educated source. The article was written in July of 2018, making it a fairly recent source.
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I plan to use the information in the article to better the hypothesis of my essay. I will use

Sadeghi’s beliefs and research on negative words and human vibrations as evidence that words

really do affect your physical health.

Sadeghi, Habib. “The Power of Words And Our Health by Habib Sadeghi.” Being Clarity, 16

Jan. 2019, beingclarity.com/the-power-of-words-and-our-health/.

“The Power of Words And Our Health,” written by Sadeghi and published by Being

Clarity, is a powerful article with many interesting facts and stories of negative words and the

affects those negative words cause. He discusses a Malatian tribe who would curse a tree that

was too big for them to cut down. The tribe would insult the tree and call it mean names anytime

a tribe member passed by. The tree ended up dying by rotting itself, in about thirty days.

As I stated earlier, Sadeghi wrote this and many other similar articles in the hopes to

make people aware of how their words can impact someone’s health. Not only does Sadeghi

have a DO, he also served as an attending Physician and Clinical Facilitator at UCLA-Santa

Monica Medical Center. He is currently a Clinical Instructor of Family Medicine at Western

University of Health Sciences. His diverse education and experiences established him as an

expert on this topic.

I will use this article to answer my question: Does negativity affect your physical health?

Sadeghi answers the question by talking about Dr. Masaru Emoto’s experiment with rice. Emoto

gave a jar of rice to a third-grade classroom. He asked the kids to insult one jar of cooked rice

and to love on the other jar. In three weeks, the jar of rice that had been insulted had turned black

and moldy, while the rice that had been loved on was perfectly white and plump.
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“The Power Of Words And Your Health.” Kirby Medical Center, 15 Dec. 2016,

www.kirbyhealth.org/about/news/2016/december/the-power-of-words-and-your-health.

“The Power Of Words And Your Health,” written by the Kirby Medical Center goes

more in depth about the power of “I can” and “I can’t.” The author talks about how using the

phrase “I can’t” can seal your fate. Words are so powerful that if you speak something often

enough, it can become real. This explains why using our words negatively can be detrimental to

our health. Comparatively, the same can be true with your positive words. The saying, “Your

tongue is a two-edged sword,” is clear with this article.

Although the article was written anonymously, Kirby Medical Center is a well-known

care facility. One of the center’s best doctor is Dr. Benjamin Davis who has been practicing

medicine for over ten years. I believe this article was directed at individuals searching for

information on this specific topic. Although the article was written in 2016, it is still relatively

recent making it recent and up to date.

This article’s philosophy, “Change your language and you’ll change your life,” will be

very helpful and beneficial to my topic. The articles input on using your words to better yourself

will help me answer my question: Does positivity affects your physical health?

ThinCube, director. Dr Masaru Emoto's Water Experiment - Words Are Alive! YouTube,

YouTube, 19 Mar. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=au4qx_l8KEU.

This video, created by Thincube and published by YouTube, shows a series of crystalized

water images. These are microscopic images of water crystals that have been insulted and bullied

or loved and spoken to with kind words. The water crystals that received the kind words were
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bright and beautifully patterned. In contrast, the water crystals that had been spoken to unkindly

to were very dull and ugly looking.

This experiment was conducted by Dr Masaru Emoto, who has performed by many

experiments and has done much research on the topic of words and water. He has written several

books on this topic and is well known author.

This is a perfect film to support the claims I will be making in my essay. Dr Emoto’s

experiment proves that words have the extraordinary power to change the structure of water.

Because humans are composed mostly of water, this is a perfect example as to what words do to

the cells in our body.