The cheerful lexicon of the Spanish language may help solve a health mystery called the Hispanic Paradox
In early December 2021, I was seeing a physical therapist for a shoulder injury. During one of my visits, the therapist was alternating between me and another patient on an adjacent bed, who had a knee replacement. While the therapist worked on the other patient’s leg, stretching it and bending the knee, I eavesdropped on their conversation.
The patient was in pain, anxious to complete the hard part of the therapy. The therapist was encouraging him to keep working. At one point the patient expressed a desire to quit. The therapist responded “Te queda una semanita más.” This translates to “You have a short week left.” The patient agreed to continue.
By adding the suffix “ita” to the word “semana,” – or week – the therapist offered the patient a perspective on how much therapy remained in a way that sounded shorter, even though it was still a full week.
This ability to minimize or exaggerate a situation by simply adding a suffix is one feature of the Spanish language that could contribute to a striking resilience in health that researchers have documented in Hispanic populations in the United States, called the “Hispanic Paradox.” ...
About 30 years ago, researchers reported that Hispanics in the United States lived longer and had lower rates of heart disease than their non-Hispanic white counterparts. This is despite having high prevalence of risk factors for heart disease, such as obesity and diabetes, and experiencing stress from discrimination and low wages. ...
Stress also contributes to heart disease. How people react to that stress is important, too. The extent to which our language facilitates how we process our emotions in response to stress may therefore be important in heart disease. For that reason, the Spanish language may offer an advantage. Having lived a bilingual life, I believe this to be true.
This seeming paradox between Hispanics’ higher health risk yet lower overall rate of heart disease came to be called the Hispanic Paradox. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hispanics lived on average three years longer than their white counterparts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...
I came across a paper on the positivity of human language. The researchers had developed a “happy index” that they applied to measure the number of positive words in a variety of sources from several different languages. They analyzed books, newspapers, music lyrics and tweets, for instance.
A figure in the paper showed the distribution of the happy index across sources and languages. The result was startling. The sources with the highest happy index ratings were those in Spanish!
Once I identified the Spanish language as a focus, the pieces began falling into place. I relied on linguistic analyses to examine the role of language in emotion. A current theory of emotion describes how people need language in order for their brains to construct emotions. Research shows that emotions influence how blood pressure and heart rate react to and recover from stress. And our reactions and recovery from stress play a central role in the development of heart disease.
In other words, the rich and positive emotion lexicon of the Spanish language may not only influence culture over time, but also influence our emotional reaction to stress. ...
While English is the language of science – precise and succinct – my hunch is that the flowery nature of Spanish contributes to a culture that supports emotional expression. In doing so, it can help its speakers manage the responses to stress.
