Nobody understands exactly how to harness the placebo effect, but once again scientists have demonstrated its almost unbelievable power.
The latest example comes in the areas of endurance and obesity. Scientists genotyped people for their genetic exercise capacity and physiological satiety, a fancy description for desire to eat.
If you’re into science, you can’t help but be intrigued by the placebo effect.
In this case, scientists deliberately misled volunteers in their study, telling some genetically equipped for endurance that they had a gene called CREB 1 that predisposes people to tire easily and telling others who had that gene that they were genetically programmed for high-endurance.
The results as published in “Nature Human Behavior” this week?
“Merely receiving genetic risk information changed individuals’ cardiorespiratory physiology, perceived exertion and running endurance during exercise.”
When the scientists ran the same experiment with a second gene – FTO – they got similar results. FTO influences the desire to eat.
People told they had a version of the gene that left them still hungry after meals weren’t influenced by the size of the meal they ate. People told they had a version of the gene that reduced hunger – even those who had the gene that was supposed to leave them hungry – felt well fed after eating only a small meal.
The feeling of being well fed wasn’t just in their head either. Their thoughts had influenced their bodies to the extent they their blood contained higher levels of a hormone associated with the feeling of fullness.
As the researchers summarized, the simple idea that the FTO gene was supposed to do something “changed satiety physiology and perceived fullness after food consumption in a self-fulfilling manner.”
What you believe
The control the mind exerts over the body is one of those great unknowns in human health, sport and more. And yet it is has been documented time and time again.
“Placebos won’t lower your cholesterol or shrink a tumor,” Harvard adds. “Instead, they work on symptoms modulated by the brain, like the perception of pain.”
Faith healers would argue that. Studies on faith healing, mainly directed at prayer, have been all over the place on the issue of efficacy.
Ian Ayers sums that all up pretty well at Freakonomics. Suffice to say, the studies are bogged down in religion in which the true believers, by definition, believe, and the non-believers disbelieve.
Prayer may work; it may not. The subject is inherently hard to study. Even among the true believers, most put at least some faith in modern medicine, and are thus likely to seek standard medical treatment.
And studies on those diagnosed with terminal illnesses are difficult because they’re terminal. They’re destined to die within a prescribed timeframe, and most of them will.
What it means if they out live that timeframe is hard to say. Scientist Stephen Jay Gould was in 1982 famously diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, and given eight months to live.
He died 20 years later from metastic adenocarcinoma, a lung cancer unrelated to mesothelioma. Along the way he wrote a now semi-famous article titled “The Median Isn’t the Message,” which essentially argued that just because things are predicted to happen doesn’t mean they will happen.
He looked at the data on mesothelioma deaths and realized that though most people died soon after diagnosis there was “a long tail (however small) that extended for several years above the eight-month median. I saw no reason why I shouldn’t be in that small tail, and I breathed a very long sigh of relief.”
Whether his belief that he was going to be part of that long tail saved him from an early death can be debated at length.
But there is no debate about the placebo effect. It has been shown to work over and over again. Pharmacological studies now correct for it. Why?
Because the simple fact that a doctor gives you a pill and tells you it will help is likely to make you feel better.
The problem with the placebo effect is that it isn’t foolproof and worse yet, you have to believe. If you don’t believe, you’re basically screwed.
Personal history
The placebo effect has long intrigued me because I have had experience with it. For most of a decade, I suffered from back pain that ranged from nagging to acute.
Like Gould, I immersed myself in the literature. What it said was that most back issues are muscle related, but there are certain skeletal problems that can only be fixed with surgery.
I didn’t want surgery. I regularly in those days talked with Dave Harkness, the Anchorage area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. He’d had several surgeries to fix his back. They’d left him with nothing but more pain.
He had good days, and he had bad days, as did I. But his pain made anything I was dealing with seem minor. It was such that he eventually committed suicide.
I went to doctors, physical therapists and chiropractors looking for solutions, but the treatments provided very little relief. Probably, in part, because, deep down, I just didn’t believe they would.
It was sort of like knowing the morphine was actually saline solution. Eventually, to make a long story short, I went to see a neurosurgeon who ordered an MRI. I remember seeing the problem the day I walked out of the imaging center and held that MRI to the light. The neurosurgeon looked at the MRI and said he could fix it.
I put the surgery off until the day a short run ended with my back seizing so bad I couldn’t stand. After crawling from the bedroom to the bathroom and finding it almost impossible to pull myself up to where I could pee, I called the neuro and said, “we need to do this, and we need to do it now.”
I was in surgery within a couple of days. A week later I was hiking pain-free for the first time in years. A week after that I was running. And what followed was my real experience with the placebo effect, which makes the recent study on endurance so personally interesting.
Believing you can
While in the hospital, I decided I was going to run a marathon in under three hours by the time I turned 40. I’d long been a runner, but not a very competitive one.
I’m not exactly designed to be a runner: big muscles, big bones.
Back in my diving days, friends used to laugh at my negative buoyancy. Even when overweight, even with lungs full of air, I sank. Wetsuits, which provide bouyancy, were a revelation. Suddenly I had some idea of what swimming more on top of the water instead of down in the water was like for other people.
Having run near 40 minutes in a 10K already by then, I didn’t figure it would take long to take a few minutes off, and it didn’t. I was soon regularly running sub-40 10Ks.
That sub-three hour marathon proved trickier. For one thing, I had to get my body weight down to what was for me an almost skeletal 170 pounds, which was significantly harder than increasing my training mileage to 100 miles per week and beyond.
Despite the weight loss and the training, the first few marathons were abject failures. They generally went well until halfway or so, and then the wheels fell off.
Fatigue set in and I slowed down. It wasn’t until I trained my mind to believe I could maintain pace even when fatigued that everything changed. My overall fitness never improved all that much in this period, but my thinking certainly did.
I’d take my lunch hour to go to the club and run 10-minute intervals at 6-minute-per-mile place on a treadmill with only a couple of minutes of recovery between. Afterward, I’d be barely able to walk the couple blocks back to the office, but those long intervals were convincing me that I could maintain a high rate of turnover even in the face of fatigue.
To run a sub-3 marathon, you only need to run an average 6:50 pace. Convincing myself that I could run even faster than that when tired made me believe 6:50 would be easy.
It was, and it wasn’t.
The first sub-3 hour marathon I ran was in Vancouver, and it started badly. I didn’t feel good. I spent time looking for a port-a-pottie in which to make an emergency pit stop in the first third of the race. I thought about quitting at halfway.
By then, I was significantly behind pace and feeling pretty disappointed, and then things just started to click. I won’t say the running was easy, but I was clicking off 6:30 miles and didn’t feel at all uncomfortable. I began passing runner after runner, and by the time I hit the 10K-to-the-finish mark, I was only about 42 minutes away from going sub-3.
In my head, the only thought was “42 minutes for a 10K? I can run a 42 minute 10K without even trying.”
Crossing the finish line in 2:58 was almost anti-climatic because I’d known – known – for more than six miles that this was going to be something better than three hours. The end was in some ways even a little disappointing. I could have gone faster.
But the result was also a big eye-opener: What you know you can do in training is what you can do in a race.
The performance was part physiological, but a whole lot more psychological. Psychologically, I was in a whole different place than I’d ever been before.
When I started the Vancouver Marathon, I knew I could run sub-3 hours though I’d never come all that close before. But still I KNEW. The training had fully convinced me. I was a believer, and the believe delivered results.
Placebo effect.
Categories: Commentary
Awesome article. I read about this extensively in related to healing/ placebo / spiritual effects. The body responds to what you believe. It’s unbelievable! Another amazing article from medred !
In the situation of amputations I’ve never heard of anyone growing another limb, no matter what is believed.
Sorry Steve, I use my cell on the “fly” when I write. Again, I cannot disagree with you on much except when you veer to far left and get a bit out there. I never said “high amounts of protein”. I said that we, as humans, needed animals for all kinds of development and energy. Protein included and more so during times past. I am talking before the cell and before people started sitting on their arses 15hrs a day. Instead of always looking at fracking as the boogey man causes earthquakes, cancer, yadda) all the time, just look down any isle of your supermarket. Nothing but food wrapped in cans, boxes, and plastic bags. This would be the main culprit in my book along with GMO’s. They go hand-in-hand I know. Of course select environmental occupations and contact play a part. So, I don’t know whether I am arguing for you or against you. But, I do know cancers and allergies are OUT OF CONTROL these days.
Bryan,
A yale university study proves a link between “fracking” and cancer.
“An expansive new analysis by Yale School of Public Health researchers confirms that numerous carcinogens involved in the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing have the potential to contaminate air and water in nearby communities.”
“The team examined an extensive list of more than 1,000 chemicals that may be released into air or water as a result of fracking.”
“Previous studies have examined the carcinogenicity of more selective lists of chemicals,” said Deziel. “To our knowledge, our analysis represents the most expansive review of carcinogenicity of hydraulic fracturing-related chemicals in the published literature.”
https://publichealth.yale.edu/article.aspx?id=13714
Having “the potential to” and “may be” are not very definitive words and do not “prove” anything. Just saying…
Steve, enough on fracking. Let 7s stay on topic here.
https://www.wateronline.com/doc/yale-study-fracking-blame-water-contamination-0001
Sure Bryan,
You seem to now how to stay on topic real well…
“Our examination…uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health,” states a blistering 266-page report released today by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, Physicians for Social Responsibility. Drawing on news investigations, government assessments and more than 1,200 peer-reviewed research articles, the study finds that fracking – shooting chemical-laden fluid into deep rock layers to release oil and gas – is poisoning the air, contaminating the water and imperiling the health of Americans across the country.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-harms-of-fracking-new-report-details-increased-risks-of-asthma-birth-defects-and-cancer-126996/amp/
You are correct..You have me there. We do get a bit off topic. I am guilty and actually enjoy the spirited discussions. But damn, placebos and fracking? “Concerned Health Professionals of New York and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, Physicians for Social Responsibility.” Are they some Global Warming front groups as well? Sounds like a group of politically driven screwballs.
Bryan,
When you say “Politically driven screwballs”, I can only think back to your constant barrage of inflammatory comments blaming the Democrats on everything under the sun for 3 months leading up to our state elections?
As for the physician group that is against fracking, well it is appropriate because although fracking is not a Placebo, the “National Narrative” of lies we are spoon fed by state sponsored media and government press releases (stating there is no danger in fracking) sure is a Placebo.
After all, whether it is a “sugar pill” or “false narrative”, what is a Placebo other than an out-right lie fed to the “sheep like” masses to calm their anxiety on life?
Good topic and story, Craig.
I was not able to find Gould’s “The Median Isn’t the Message”-is it in his “The Mismeasure of Man?” The guy (Gould) was contracted by Natural History magazine to write 300 essays (one per month) and he kept his side of the contract. And calling Stephen J Gould a “scientist” is on the order of calling Joe Dimaggio a “ball player.”
thanks for the catch, Bill. i forgot to include the link to “The Median Isn’t the Message.” it’s in there now.
Wow,
Lots going on in this story…
As for the “Placebo Effect” it seems our Politicians have mastered it’s effects on society.
Obama ran on a platform of withdrawing U.S. Troops from Afganistan and closing G Bay prison site….what really happened after he got the votes?
More “black site” prisons and continual involvement in the Afgan civil war as well as Wars in Lybia and Syria?
As for our instate GOP, we just had a campaign run on a $6,700.00 dividend check and fiscal cuts to bring the budget back in line….
What are we seeing already?
$3K alotted in the new budget for dividends and the same $2 Billion Dollars a year in deficits….only Republicans will now milk the coffers in the state administration instead of Democrats and Independents?
If this is not “Placebo Politics” that what is?
As for back pain and pain in general, more rest (three days flat rest) when injured, and plenty of water followed by a strict “detox” diet seems to work best.
Animal proteins cause Acidosis in body, and we need an Alkaline base to achieve optimal health.
Lemon juice in spring water and plenty of fruits, berries, veggies and whole grains without Glueton are best.
Remember Hypocrites said:
“Let food be your medicine.”
Well this still holds true today!
Steve, may I assume cancer runs on your family? Forgive my assumption but, you laid out what some would say is a diet to directly reduce cancer. Man in his early development needed meat for numerous reason. A brain is a very nutritionally demanding organ, and if you want to grow a big one, eating at least some meat will provide you far more calories with far less effort than a meatless menu will. What’s more, while animal muscle eaten straight from the carcass requires a lot of ripping and tearing—which demands big, sharp teeth and a powerful bite—once we learned to process our meat, we could do away with some of that, developing smaller teeth and a less pronounced and muscular jaw. This, in turn, may have led to other changes in the skull and neck, favoring a larger brain, better thermoregulation and more advanced speech organs.The problem is today’s diet is so processed with chemicals that it all could be the basis for the monumental upticks in diseases. As for the placebo, well, I witnessed a cancer group where half was given the trial and the other half the placebo. The whole group that was given the placebo died while the other group extended their lives somewhat. The power of Faith in various forms cannot be overlooked either. After all, that is all a placebo is right?
Bryan,
Did you go to state college and eat too much bacon?
Cancer is ripping up our society…
It affects nearly half the families in America in either one way or another.
Athletes like K.R. who never smoked and ate “healthy” still face the disease.
Environmental Pollution, Fracking, heavy metals in fish and older dental work as well as vaccines with Aluminum are to blame.
Just stand on any street corner in Amerika and inhale toxic diesel fumes and tell me how you feel?
Geoengineering adds to the toxic stew we all must face.
As for “Placebo”…
It is defined as “a measure designed merely to calm or please someone.”
Hence the above connection to ongoing political lies.
It is only the modern narrow view of society that relates placebo to pill or injection.
This comes from the all engulfed medical mafia propaganda we are bombarded by daily.
(Take the Purple Pill….Ask your Dr. how?)
Just like the biologist in Craig’s story found NO relief from multiple surgeries, so too do many Cancer patients when injected with toxic Chemotherapy which has a PH of less than 3.
Diet is the foundation of health regardless of the disease process!
Detoxification is the focus of a healthy diet.
We do not need high amounts of protein like we are led to believe…
How else could moose get so large on Willows or Whales grow to be the king of the sea on grass and plankton?
The truth is our jaws evolved mostly eating fruit.
The focus on meat has been more recent in our timeline as humans.
https://youtu.be/bM5gn26wdQA