Mind over matter

 For 45 years, a Harvard-related lab has been researching the ways in which the mind “has enormous control over health and wellbeing.”  Using elaborate experiments, researchers have found, for example, that—

• People’s perception of the passage of time influenced how quickly their wounds healed (wounds healed faster when participants believed more time had passed and slower when they believed less time had passed—even though their actual elapsed time was the same in every case).
• Expecting fatigue causes people to feel more tired.
• Thinking you will catch a cold is associated with an increased likelihood of doing so.
• People who expected certain benefits, such as weight loss, from daily exercise, did see those benefits, while those without the same expectations did not see the benefits, even though their activities were the same.
• Given a diagnostic label, such as “prediabetic,” affects people’s health outcome. This is the “borderline effect”: people above the prediabetic borderline score (5.7 percent) experienced significantly greater increases in their blood sugar levels than those with a 5.6 percent score, even though there’s no relevant difference between the two.

Then, of course, there’s the placebo effect. Under the right circumstances, a placebo can be just as effective as traditional treatments. For example, in one study on migraines, one group took a migraine drug labeled with the drug's name, another took a placebo labeled "placebo," and a third group took nothing. The researchers discovered that the placebo was 50 percent as effective as the real drug to reduce pain after a migraine attack. As one researcher noted, “The placebo effect is more than positive thinking — believing a treatment or procedure will work. It's about creating a stronger connection between the brain and body and how they work together."

 There’s now a product called Zeebo, in which “you are the active ingredient.” For $25, you can get 45 cellulose pills. You focus on what you want to treat, set your expectations for the treatment, design your own regimen, and follow it. Another chance to do science.

I have my own mind-over-matter trick. I’ve found that most people, if they’ve had a sleepless night, complain about being tired the next day. I never am, even if I’ve only had a couple hours sleep. I just assume I’ll be fine.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.