Speaker 1: Good a team.
Speaker 2: So today we're talking about something that everyone experiences, but
Speaker 2: very few people really understand.
Speaker 1: We talk about it on this show quite a bit.
Speaker 2: I talk about it quite a bit, but I wanted
Speaker 2: to do a different kind of a deep dive into
Speaker 2: the topic. And we're talking about thoughts, specifically, we're talking
Speaker 2: about the potential ramifications and consequences good and bad of thinking.
Speaker 2: You know me, I'm fucking obsessed with the mind. I'm
Speaker 2: obsessed with thinking. I'm obsessed with what we can do
Speaker 2: with our mind. I think it is the most misunderstood
Speaker 2: yet powerful component of the human experience. I don't think
Speaker 2: we know how to use our mind properly. I don't
Speaker 2: know that we ever will. I think, you know, this
Speaker 2: is something I think about a lot. It's something I
Speaker 2: study a lot. I'm doing a PhD in it, blah
Speaker 2: blah blah blah, and I'm still I'm still baby stepping it, Nonetheles.
Speaker 1: So I think it's really good to talk about. That's
Speaker 1: what we're going to do.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about thoughts, and they're not just ideas floating.
Speaker 1: Around in your head, but they are a.
Speaker 2: Physiological reality, or they can have a physiological consequence that's
Speaker 2: for sure. The truth that a single thought can change
Speaker 2: what's going on in your body.
Speaker 1: How amazing is that.
Speaker 2: So your body's not responding to an event or a situation,
Speaker 2: or some change in some kind of external stimuli, but
Speaker 2: rather your thoughts. A single thought can change your blood
Speaker 2: pressure or what's happening with your hormones and your breathing
Speaker 2: and your muscle tension, and your immune system and your
Speaker 2: nervous system.
Speaker 1: I think most people think of thoughts.
Speaker 2: As kind of intangible, harmless, weightless, just kind of mental activity,
Speaker 2: something that happens in the background, something that's kind of
Speaker 2: separate to the body, something that has no real consequence
Speaker 2: unless we act on the thought. But that's actually wrong,
Speaker 2: it's completely wrong. So your body is not responding to
Speaker 2: the world. I'm going to say that again. Your body
Speaker 2: is not responding to the world. Your body is responding
Speaker 2: to your interpretation of the world. Your body is responding
Speaker 2: to the meaning that you create through that window through
Speaker 2: which you observe and process and understand and dissect and
Speaker 2: tell stories about the world. Your body is responding to
Speaker 2: the story that your mind is telling you about what
Speaker 2: is going on. Your brain is running your physiology moment
Speaker 2: to moment based on what it believes is happening.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say that again. Your brain.
Speaker 2: Is running your physiology moment to moment based on what
Speaker 2: your brain thinks.
Speaker 1: Is happening, not what's happening.
Speaker 2: If you're in the middle of a shitty situation, but
Speaker 2: you think it's a shitty situation, guess what's happening in
Speaker 2: your body not bad stuff, good stuff.
Speaker 1: If you're in a what.
Speaker 2: For other people would be a chaotic circumstance or environment
Speaker 2: or environment, but in the middle of that outward kind
Speaker 2: of chaos, you are calm. Guess what's happening with your
Speaker 2: nervous system. It's calm, it's parasympathetic, not sympathetic. Guess what's
Speaker 2: going on with your heart rate. It's low, not high,
Speaker 2: your blood pressure low, not high. Not because you're in
Speaker 2: a calm situation, but because you interpret that thing as calm,
Speaker 2: as not a problem, as not chaotic, as not a catastrophe,
Speaker 2: and as a result, your physiology is reflective of the story, not.
Speaker 1: The situation or circumstance.
Speaker 2: This is why a stressful thought can increase our heart
Speaker 2: rate without anything happening.
Speaker 1: It's why embarrassment can make your face go red.
Speaker 2: It's why fear can make your stomach drop in inverted commas,
Speaker 2: It's why worry can literally make you feel sick. It's
Speaker 2: why anticipation of something can give you goose bumps. The
Speaker 2: thought is the trigger. The body is the response to
Speaker 2: the trigger the thought. The body just does what it's
Speaker 2: told to do, essentially, or the body just does what
Speaker 2: makes sense to the body in accordance with the information
Speaker 2: in inverted commas, information I should really say interpretation that
Speaker 2: it's getting.
Speaker 1: So today we're going to explore all that.
Speaker 2: You know that I've been fascinated with place ebos and
Speaker 2: no cibos and you're not sure exactly what that means.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a look at how belief can
Speaker 2: reduce pain, change movement, alter healing, and influence the very
Speaker 2: chemicals that your brain produces. We're going to look at
Speaker 2: the place Ebo and no Cibo effect and what happens
Speaker 2: when your brain decides that something is safe or dangerous,
Speaker 2: or possible or hopeless or already improving. Because when you
Speaker 2: understand that a thought can change your chemistry, I mean
Speaker 2: really understand it and understand that an expectation can change
Speaker 2: your nervous system and understand that your belief can change
Speaker 2: your biology. You start to realize that your mind is
Speaker 2: not just observing life, it's shaping it literally physically in
Speaker 2: real time. And this is the consequence of thought. So
Speaker 2: let's start here. I want to share some stories with
Speaker 2: you today, which I fucking love. So today's quite it's
Speaker 2: almost like a storytelling episode.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think.
Speaker 2: But I want to tell you so story one I
Speaker 2: want to share with you I'm calling the knee surgery
Speaker 2: that wasn't the knee surgery that wasn't. So in the
Speaker 2: nine nineties, there was a surgeon named doctor Bruce Moseley.
Speaker 2: He worked out of primarily out of Houston. He worked
Speaker 2: with NBA teams, he worked with elite athletes, and he
Speaker 2: kept seeing the same thing, and that was arthroscopic knee
Speaker 2: surgery for osteos for osteoarthritis. And it often didn't seem
Speaker 2: really to do much clinically or medically or physiologically, but somehow,
Speaker 2: for some reason, patients swore by it, they swore that
Speaker 2: it helped. But him from a clinical and an observational perspective,
Speaker 2: he didn't really think it did much. But what he
Speaker 2: did observe was that the people who had the operation
Speaker 2: really believed right despite what he saw physically, clinically, medically,
Speaker 2: what he observed was that those people really believed that
Speaker 2: the operation did something. So he did something really a
Speaker 2: little bit fucking sneaky. Well not that sneaky because it
Speaker 2: was a controlled study, but he ran a controlled study
Speaker 2: with three groups and he did surgery in inverted commas
Speaker 2: on these three groups. So group one that had the surgery,
Speaker 2: they had the proper surgery. They had the full arthroscopic surgery,
Speaker 2: that cleaning out of the old you know people going, no,
Speaker 2: I'm just going in to get the knee cleaned out.
Speaker 2: Well that's that's generally, this is arthroscopic surgery. That's what
Speaker 2: they're talking about.
Speaker 1: So Group one.
Speaker 2: Had the cleaning out of the knee, they had the
Speaker 2: actual operation. Group two, I don't actually know exactly what
Speaker 2: this is. I couldn't find it in the research specifically,
Speaker 2: but they had a partial procedure, they had something done,
Speaker 2: but not the full surgery. And Group three they had
Speaker 2: placebo surgery. They had fuck all done. So they the
Speaker 2: patients were wheeled into the theater, they were put under anesthesia.
Speaker 2: There were three small incisions made in the knee, so
Speaker 2: they thought they were having like it replicated the actual surgery,
Speaker 2: but there was no surgery done. There was no actual
Speaker 2: surgical repair, so they took them into theater, they put
Speaker 2: them under anesthetic. I don't think i'd want that done anyway.
Speaker 2: They made some small cuts in their knee, the same
Speaker 2: cuts as the people who had the actual surgery would have,
Speaker 2: so when they came out of surgery looked like that
Speaker 2: had surgery, but nothing was actually done. There was nothing
Speaker 2: invasive in their knee at all. So they stitched them
Speaker 2: back up, not having had an operation, and sent them.
Speaker 1: Back to rehab as normal.
Speaker 2: Now, the patients did not know which group they are in,
Speaker 2: which of the three groups are in. Also, interestingly, the
Speaker 2: surgeons performing the follow up assessments and the treatment team,
Speaker 2: the clinicians, they didn't know.
Speaker 1: Even And so what was the result.
Speaker 2: Well, the placebo surgery patients improved just as much, just
Speaker 2: as much as those who had the actual surgery surgery.
Speaker 2: In fact, in some measures, they improved more patients who
Speaker 2: had nothing done. In fact, so there was nothing invasive
Speaker 2: done inside the knee, They reported less pain, They reported
Speaker 2: better mobility and greater confidence walking and climbing the stairs.
Speaker 2: One of the patients in the plus C bow group,
Speaker 2: who had lots of trouble, actually returned to playing professional basketball,
Speaker 2: having no idea that nothing had actually been done inside
Speaker 2: his knee. Yes, he had three superficial cuts, but there
Speaker 2: was no real surgery. So why does this matter. Why
Speaker 2: does this matter? Well, the surgery had been working for
Speaker 2: years and the good doc believes and evidence would suggest
Speaker 2: that it was working not because of any kind of
Speaker 2: physiological or mechanical fix, but rather because the patients believed
Speaker 2: that something had been repaired. Doctors believed that they were
Speaker 2: helping everyone doc does, patients, family, Everyone expected improvement and
Speaker 2: the brain delivered the change. So this study really blew
Speaker 2: up the orthopedics world when it was published in the
Speaker 2: New England Journal of Medicine in the early two thousands.
Speaker 2: So if you want to look it up, I think
Speaker 2: it was two thousand and two. And it forced healthcare
Speaker 2: to confront something that was like an uncomfortable or an
Speaker 2: inconvenient truth, and that is that belief can trigger physical
Speaker 2: recovery pathways that looked like the result of surgery. And
Speaker 2: one of the ever present questions for me around this
Speaker 2: is why, why is this stuff? Why is understanding place ebos,
Speaker 2: understanding how the mind can heal the body, Understanding the
Speaker 2: potential and the power of this mind body connection, this
Speaker 2: psychology physiology link. I know the answer, by the way,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to ask the question.
Speaker 1: The question is why the fuck are we not studying this?
Speaker 2: Why is this not the most important question being asked
Speaker 2: and answered in health, in recovery, in medicine, in wellness,
Speaker 2: and of course the question is because if all of
Speaker 2: a sudden we could heal ourselves. Imagine if we learned
Speaker 2: how to actually heal ourselves from nearly everything and anything.
Speaker 2: Imagine if we could figure out that I can actually
Speaker 2: lower my blood pressure by doing this or doing without medication.
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting you stop any medication, by the way,
Speaker 2: This is not what today is about. I'm just opening
Speaker 2: the door on this fascinating reality that there are things
Speaker 2: that happen in medicine and outside of medicine, in healing
Speaker 2: and in health that make in inverted commas no sense.
Speaker 2: There would be lots of organizations and companies and sellers
Speaker 2: of pills and powders and potions and surgeries. Of course,
Speaker 2: who would suffer incredibly financially if we all figured out
Speaker 2: that we didn't need all of the things we think
Speaker 2: we do. Again, don't confuse what I'm saying. I definitely
Speaker 2: think medicine and clinical treatment and doctors and nurses and
Speaker 2: all of that. You know, of course, there's a place,
Speaker 2: there's a place. But this is also a really fucking
Speaker 2: door to open.
Speaker 1: All right. Story number two, I love this one.
Speaker 2: So I'm calling this the Parkinson's dopamine that wasn't so
Speaker 2: let me explain that. So Parkinston Parkinson's disease involves the
Speaker 2: loss of dopamine producing neurons, those feel good neurons, and
Speaker 2: that causes tremors because a whole lot of neurological issues.
Speaker 2: It causes difficulty with movement, with walking, with mobility, with balance,
Speaker 2: with control, with all of those things.
Speaker 1: So one of.
Speaker 2: The things that happens with Parkinson's is that these neurons are.
Speaker 1: Destroyed or lost.
Speaker 2: And in the early two thousands, researchers ran a trial
Speaker 2: to test a new drug, which researchers are always doing.
Speaker 2: And of course these need to be double blind studies,
Speaker 2: where some people are getting a medication, some people are not.
Speaker 2: And of course, as as is commonplace in this kind
Speaker 2: of research, some participants got the actual medication and some
Speaker 2: got a place ebo.
Speaker 1: Of course, nobody knows what they're on.
Speaker 2: People don't know whether or not they're getting the real
Speaker 2: medication or a pill full of nothing. And what happened,
Speaker 2: and again you know it's coming, but I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you anyway, what happens shocked everybody because the placebo group,
Speaker 2: so the people who've got no drug, they thought they
Speaker 2: were getting a drug, or the thought they might have
Speaker 2: been getting a drug.
Speaker 1: And time and time.
Speaker 2: Again, it seems that people who do this kind of research,
Speaker 2: whether or not whatever group they're in, most people seem
Speaker 2: to think that they're getting the drug.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is about. That's another episode.
Speaker 2: But anyway, the placebo groups, so the group that were
Speaker 2: taking nothing, nothing with any therapeutic, I think their starch
Speaker 2: I think it's just starched the tablets. Anyway, So they
Speaker 2: showed reduced tremors, smoother movement, improved walking, better facial control.
Speaker 2: But like the really fucking astonishing bit of this research
Speaker 2: in their study in particular, was what happened with the
Speaker 2: brain scans. So the placebo patients, the people that were
Speaker 2: getting nothing, they thought they were getting something, and there
Speaker 2: was a huge surge of dopamine. Remember they're neurons that
Speaker 2: produced dopamine are badly affected. But for some reason the
Speaker 2: patient's taking nothing, all of a sudden, who couldn't generally
Speaker 2: produce dopamine at any significant level, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: dopamine was flooding their brain. Not pretend dopamine, but actual, real,
Speaker 2: measurable dopamine. The brain produced the chemical because the person
Speaker 2: believed they.
Speaker 1: Were beating treatment. They were being treated, I'm.
Speaker 2: Going to say that again, So they when they looked
Speaker 2: at their brain, their brain was flooded with dopamine. Even
Speaker 2: though these people who couldn't generally produce any real level
Speaker 2: of dopamine were not getting any drug to help them
Speaker 2: do so. But because they thought they were being treated,
Speaker 2: and this wasn't imagination, this was neurochemical reality. So their
Speaker 2: expectation activated part of the brain called the nuclear circumbence,
Speaker 2: and that triggers dopamine release and temporarily restored for them
Speaker 2: movement function, balance, coordination, control, smooth out tremors, all of
Speaker 2: these things that were considered to be phiz ieologically impossible
Speaker 2: without medication, but they I guess they medicated themselves with
Speaker 2: their mind.
Speaker 1: So why does this matter? Well, Parkinson's is.
Speaker 2: A neurological disease, hard physical neurodegeneration, real biological physiological.
Speaker 1: Damage.
Speaker 2: Yet belief alone for these people change their neurochemistry and behavior.
Speaker 2: So the placebo didn't just change how they felt. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just a psychological shift or an emotional shift. So
Speaker 2: it didn't just change how they felt. It literally changed
Speaker 2: how their brain worked. And then as a byproduct of that,
Speaker 2: what was happening in their brain, then what was happening
Speaker 2: in their nervous system. More broadly, what was happening you know,
Speaker 2: in their muscular system, neuromuscular combination and so on.
Speaker 1: So this forced neuroscience to.
Speaker 2: Rethink this particular study for neuroscience to rethink the mind
Speaker 2: body boundary, the role of expectation in motor symptoms, and
Speaker 2: how belief interacts with the basil ganglia also a crucial.
Speaker 1: Part of the brain with this and dopamine pathways.
Speaker 2: And as a consequent this research became one of the
Speaker 2: strongest demonstrations that the brain is not a passenger, it's
Speaker 2: the driver and So what's the takeaway.
Speaker 1: I guess the takeaway is that your.
Speaker 2: Brain isn't reacting to reality, it's reacting to what it
Speaker 2: thinks reality is.
Speaker 1: Alright, I've got a few more. This one's a belter.
Speaker 2: So story three is called the hotel housekeepers who lost
Speaker 2: weight by changing their thinking. So Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer
Speaker 2: Ellen el En a lady ran a study in the
Speaker 2: middle of the two thousands. In the mid two thousands
Speaker 2: with hotel room at tenant. So these ladies, they work
Speaker 2: for hotels. They cleaned rooms all day, They changed lenin,
Speaker 2: they vacuumed, they scrub bathways, They walked miles and miles
Speaker 2: or kilometers and kilometers of hallways. I would think, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know, but I would guess somebody's step count
Speaker 2: who does this kind of job would have to be well,
Speaker 2: well over fifteen to twenty thousand steps a day, maybe
Speaker 2: heading towards thirty but anyway, so they were moving a lot,
Speaker 2: a lot. In other words, they were doing the equivalent
Speaker 2: of moderate to vigorous exercise every day. But when they
Speaker 2: interviewed all of these women, most of them didn't think
Speaker 2: of their work as exercise. In fact, most of them
Speaker 2: considered themselves as being somewhat inactive. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: say that again, they didn't really think of their work
Speaker 2: as exercise or working out. They believed that they weren't
Speaker 2: active at all and described most of them described themselves
Speaker 2: as not really exercising, and as a result, their bodies
Speaker 2: matched their beliefs.
Speaker 1: Most of them had.
Speaker 2: Higher blood pressure, higher body fat, and lower perceived fitness.
Speaker 2: So the researcher Ellen Langer taught one group, actually educated them,
Speaker 2: taught them that they were already doing what counted as exercise.
Speaker 2: She educated them about energy expenditure, heart rate elevation, calorie burning,
Speaker 2: muscle conditioning, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Like there was She just ed.
Speaker 2: She actually explained to them quite clearly, succinctly in Layman's terms,
Speaker 2: that what they.
Speaker 1: Were doing was already.
Speaker 2: They were working out, they were exercising, they were moving
Speaker 2: a lot, and that their job was the equivalent of
Speaker 2: a daily moderate to vigorous exercise program. They were already
Speaker 2: doing it, so nothing else changed. They just told them this.
Speaker 2: They just informed this them of this. They just gave
Speaker 2: them new information. So now the women were doing the
Speaker 2: exact same thing, but they had a new story. They
Speaker 2: had a new belief, They had new awareness, they had
Speaker 2: new understanding, they had new thinking. So nothing else changed,
Speaker 2: no dietary change. They didn't walk anymore steps. There was
Speaker 2: no adjustment or change to their routine. The other group,
Speaker 2: there were two groups, the other group, they didn't get that.
Speaker 2: They got no information, and then they tracked Both groups
Speaker 2: over the next four were hicks. This is fucking hilarious anyway,
Speaker 2: And what happened after four weeks. The group who now
Speaker 2: believed and understood that they were exercising, lost body fat,
Speaker 2: lost weight across the board, saw lower blood pressure, and
Speaker 2: improved waste to hip ratios, so reduction in waste and
Speaker 2: hip measurements. And again, they didn't change anything about their behavior.
Speaker 2: The only change was how they thought about what they
Speaker 2: were already doing. Their physiology shifted to match their new
Speaker 2: self perception.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say it again. The only change was
Speaker 1: not what they were doing.
Speaker 2: They didn't eat less, they didn't move more, they didn't
Speaker 2: have some new strategy. Everything was groundhog day. It was
Speaker 2: exactly as it was before. They were doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: the same way, the same job, in the same environment,
Speaker 2: but all of a sudden they had a new understanding
Speaker 2: and new awareness. They were thinking differently and their physiology,
Speaker 2: that is, their body changed and what was happening in
Speaker 2: their body changed to match their new thinking or to
Speaker 2: match their new self perception. And the other group nothing,
Speaker 2: no changes status quo. So so why does this matter so.
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: It wasn't positive thinking or motivational quotes. It was cognitive reframing.
Speaker 2: It was cognitive.
Speaker 1: It was a different story.
Speaker 2: And as a result of that, we saw measurable metabolic change,
Speaker 2: cardiovascular change, health change. And it suggests that your body
Speaker 2: doesn't respond to just what you do, but it also
Speaker 2: responds to your understanding of what you're doing or what
Speaker 2: you believe you're doing. So expectation shapes hormone signaling, a
Speaker 2: sympathetic tone, which is your level of sympathetic nervous system activation,
Speaker 2: metabolic efficiency, how well your body metabolizes calories, energy, motivation.
Speaker 1: And effort and recovery.
Speaker 2: So in a snapshot, with this study, especially, I guess,
Speaker 2: meaning Alter's biology, I've got all the references for all
Speaker 2: of these if you ever want. But yeah, that was
Speaker 2: done across that study that was Crumb and Langer two
Speaker 2: thousand and seven. It was eighty four participants So the
Speaker 2: control group was forty and the participants were forty four,
Speaker 2: so it's not a massive study, but it was very
Speaker 2: controlled and if nothing else, you know, it's fascinating. No
Speaker 2: behavior or activity level or dietary changes happened. Only the
Speaker 2: meaning of their existing work was reframed, and as a
Speaker 2: result they saw measurable, observable, real actual changes in their body.
Speaker 2: So the next one's interesting too. This is almost the
Speaker 2: well it's not almost, it's the reverse. So this time,
Speaker 2: rather than plus cebo, where we think something good or
Speaker 2: we take an inert thing thinking it's not inert, it's
Speaker 2: rather powerful and as a result we get a powerful
Speaker 2: outcome despite the fact that there was no power in
Speaker 2: the thing, the drug, the medicine, the whatever. No cibo
Speaker 2: is talking about when a negative expectation or belief causes
Speaker 2: a negative physical or psychological response, even though the treatment
Speaker 2: or the situation itself is harmless.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if.
Speaker 2: A place ebo makes you feel better because you believe it,
Speaker 2: and no cibo spell noc ebo makes you feel worse,
Speaker 2: like literally worse and also physically worse, with negative physical consequences.
Speaker 2: Quite often, as you'll hear in a moment because you
Speaker 2: expect something bad has happened.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to say that again.
Speaker 2: If a placebo makes you better, like literally makes you
Speaker 2: better because you believe it, and no CIBO will make
Speaker 2: you worse.
Speaker 1: Because you expect something to happen.
Speaker 2: So, for example, someone who's told a medication has strong
Speaker 2: side effects, they start experiencing those side effects even if
Speaker 2: they're given a sugar pill. And again there's not psychosmatic.
Speaker 1: These are real.
Speaker 2: These are real physical side effects. A person believes the
Speaker 2: harmless smell is toxic, so they smell something another example
Speaker 2: of a nose. They smell something and they think that
Speaker 2: that is a toxic thing despite the fact that it's harmless.
Speaker 2: There's there's no danger. Nonetheless, they develop headaches and nauseas, nausea,
Speaker 2: and they start to panic. Being told you're back, for example,
Speaker 2: is damaged when it's not really damaged. Maybe you've got
Speaker 2: something minor, but all of a sudden, we've got increased pain,
Speaker 2: fear and muscle tension, restricted movement, and a level of
Speaker 2: disability that's associated more to the story than it is
Speaker 2: what's actually happening with the back. So the key idea
Speaker 2: with a no c B is that the expectation of
Speaker 2: harm can create real harm, actual harm. All right, So
Speaker 2: the next story that I want to share with you
Speaker 2: is I'm finding my space. Okay, So here it is.
Speaker 2: It's called the plus Ebo overdose, or we can call
Speaker 2: it the no Siebo effect. So in the late nine nineties,
Speaker 2: a bloke enrolled in a clinical trial for an antidepressant.
Speaker 2: Half the participants were receiving the actual medical medication and
Speaker 2: half were plus were receiving plus ebos so sugar tablets.
Speaker 1: They looked exactly the same.
Speaker 2: They're identical, so you couldn't even the team couldn't discern
Speaker 2: them what was what unless they knew, of course, but
Speaker 2: to look at they're identical. So one was the drug,
Speaker 2: the other had no active ingredient, no drugs, So he
Speaker 2: didn't know which group he was in. He was in
Speaker 2: this trial, and one day, during a moment of acute
Speaker 2: emotional distress, we'll call it that, he decided to overdose.
Speaker 2: So he got all of the pills that he had remaining,
Speaker 2: which was twenty nine pills, believing that he was sure
Speaker 2: that he was on the real drug. As I said
Speaker 2: to you before, most people think, even when they know
Speaker 2: there's a fifty to fifty chance. For whatever reason, people
Speaker 2: who are in these trials, most if there's one hundred
Speaker 2: people in the trial and fifty are on the drug
Speaker 2: and fifty and not the majority of people for whatever
Speaker 2: reason feel like they are on the drug. And probably
Speaker 2: it's because they're having very real physical changes, but they're
Speaker 2: unaware of the fact that they're actually creating the changes,
Speaker 2: not the drug. Anyway, back to the dude, So one
Speaker 2: day he was having a let's just go with him,
Speaker 2: was having a horrendous day. He was having a terrible day,
Speaker 2: and he decided to overdose. He swallowed twenty nine pills
Speaker 2: from his bottle, believing that they were real, and within minutes,
Speaker 2: his blood pressure crashed, his heart rate spiked, he became faint, shaky,
Speaker 2: and physically un stable. He was rushed to hospital, to
Speaker 2: the emergency department, and by the time he got there
Speaker 2: he was in a critical condition. And doctors tried quite
Speaker 2: they tried IV fluids, cardiac monitoring, stabilization protocols, but nothing
Speaker 2: was helping. Was he was getting worse, slightly worse. His
Speaker 2: body was responding as if he was dying from a
Speaker 2: toxic overdose. So I'm just going to say that his
Speaker 2: body was responding, so all the physiological signs that he
Speaker 2: had actually taken a toxic level of a drug. His
Speaker 2: body was demonstrating that that was real. That the and
Speaker 2: that the team did not know. They did not know,
Speaker 2: so that the medical team that I'm talking about in
Speaker 2: the hospital, they didn't know that he hadn't actually taken
Speaker 2: a drug. Then the coordinator of the trial arrived at
Speaker 2: the hospital with all of the lab records. As it
Speaker 2: turns out, you know, I'm going to tell you this already,
Speaker 2: but the dude, so the guy who'd taken the twenty
Speaker 2: nine pills, he'd taken a placebo twenty nine times. He
Speaker 2: wasn't in the medicated group, he wasn't using the actual
Speaker 2: drug that was being tried. He'd been taking a placebo
Speaker 2: the whole time. So no active drug, no biochemical agent,
Speaker 2: nothing real about that at all, just pills made of starch.
Speaker 2: So when the doctor informed him, you didn't overdose on anything.
Speaker 2: These pills contain no actual medication, almost instantly, within three minutes,
Speaker 2: his blood pressure returned to normal, his heart rates stabilized,
Speaker 2: his symptoms disappeared, and he recovered very quickly. So why
Speaker 2: does this matter? Well, this is the no cebo effect
Speaker 2: in its purest form. So a belief caused the physiological crisis.
Speaker 2: So the problem the very real. Now, remember the medical
Speaker 2: emergency was real, right, the belief was flawed, His thought
Speaker 2: was flawed. But your body can't tell the difference between
Speaker 2: what is real and what you think is real, So
Speaker 2: your body doesn't respond to what is real. Your body
Speaker 2: responds to what you think is real. Because what was
Speaker 2: real was he had taken twenty nine harmless pills, which
Speaker 2: normally would do absolutely nothing to a body, maybe give
Speaker 2: you a gut ache because you've just taken twenty nine
Speaker 2: starch pills. Who knows, But what it actually did as
Speaker 2: a consequence of his thinking about what he'd done, it
Speaker 2: put him into a death spiral, like a severe medical crisis.
Speaker 2: So a belief caused the physiological drama. And guess what
Speaker 2: a belief A belief reversal ended it. There was no
Speaker 2: chemical explanation interpreted, I'm in danger, I've poisoned myself, and
Speaker 2: it triggered an adrenaline shock response, vascular collapse, sympathetic nervous
Speaker 2: system upheaval, and then the brain. Then the moment that
Speaker 2: the brain learned there was no danger. Oh, that story
Speaker 2: I told myself is bullshit. It isn't real. I haven't
Speaker 2: taken a shitload of drugs. The moment that he realized
Speaker 2: that that there was no danger, the body reversed the
Speaker 2: entire process instantly. And that's from a paper called no
Speaker 2: Cebo Effects with Placebo Treatment and Clinical Trials, and the authors.
Speaker 1: Of that were Reeves.
Speaker 2: And Ladner in two thousand and three. I love that
Speaker 2: one so interesting. So, I mean, what's the key message. Well,
Speaker 2: if the mind can cause a problem, the mind can
Speaker 2: help solve the problem. That's that's part of it. Because
Speaker 2: your brain isn't reacting to reality. Your brain is reacting
Speaker 2: to what you think is real. Your brain is reacting
Speaker 2: to what you think or it thinks reality is alrighty,
Speaker 2: this is my last one. This is my favorite one
Speaker 2: because I'm a dude, and I've been lifting weights forever.
Speaker 2: I'm an exercise scientist, and I'm into all this shit
Speaker 2: that I'm about to share with you. But whether or
Speaker 2: not you're dude, and whether or not you're lifted weights
Speaker 2: or never lifted weights, I think you'll find this interesting
Speaker 2: because it's not so much about strength training as it
Speaker 2: is about the incredible things that can happen with belief.
Speaker 1: So this story is called the Steroids that Weren't So
Speaker 1: back in the.
Speaker 2: Early nineteen seventies, there was a guy called research called
Speaker 2: Dr Robert Ariol and he was studying strength training performance
Speaker 2: in college athletes. Time this is pre like this is
Speaker 2: pre all the drug cheating, like the more common era stuff.
Speaker 2: But at the time, anabolic steroids were starting to become
Speaker 2: popular in competitive sport. I remember a time when they
Speaker 2: weren't even illegal. Can you believe that anyway? And there
Speaker 2: was a growing belief that steroids were depending on what
Speaker 2: you're trying to get, you know, strength, power, speed, they
Speaker 2: were almost magical and if you took them that your
Speaker 2: strength and your power and your speed and your performance
Speaker 2: and your body in general would go through the roof,
Speaker 2: like all of this amazing shit would happen. So doctor
Speaker 2: Ariel designed a study to test something slightly different. So
Speaker 2: the question was not do steroids work? That wasn't the question,
Speaker 2: but the question was what happens when someone believes they're
Speaker 2: taking steroids?
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: So he recruited a group of male varsity weightlifters. So,
Speaker 2: by the way, when they believe they're taking steroids, but
Speaker 2: they're not, of course. So anyway, he recruited a bunch
Speaker 2: of blokesome weightlifters, university weightlifters, strong dudes, already training quite
Speaker 2: a background, already been lifting for quite a long time,
Speaker 2: already quite elite. So we're not talking about novices or
Speaker 2: beginners or even intermediates. We're talking about people who are
Speaker 2: reasonably down the road in terms of their own training
Speaker 2: journey and their own competitive journey. So strong, committed, high performing,
Speaker 2: motivated dudes, the kind of blokes who were obsessed with
Speaker 2: their numbers, with you know, what they lifted, what they squaded,
Speaker 2: what they benched, what they cleaned, all of those things,
Speaker 2: so all of their numbers. And for the first seven weeks,
Speaker 2: the athletes trained, So it happened in two parts. Happened
Speaker 2: in a seven week block, then a four week block.
Speaker 2: So for the first four weeks the athletes trained normally,
Speaker 2: they trained hard, they trained consistently, nothing changed. But they're
Speaker 2: all in the gym busting their ass, trying to eat well,
Speaker 2: sleep well, lift well, recover well, do all the things
Speaker 2: that elite athletes want to do. And their gains were
Speaker 2: obviously because they've been training for quite a long time.
Speaker 2: So over the seven weeks of being monitored, there were
Speaker 2: minor changes, but nothing traumatic, which is to be expected
Speaker 2: because they've already got years of training under their belt
Speaker 2: and now we're just monitoring and observing and tracking a
Speaker 2: seven week period with no real change in.
Speaker 1: The protocol or the variables. And then so then came
Speaker 1: a twist.
Speaker 2: The doctor told about half of the group at the
Speaker 2: seven week mark that they were about to go on
Speaker 2: a cycle of a really powerful steroid called dianabol, which
Speaker 2: is an oral steroid, so in other words, it's taken
Speaker 2: as a tablet. So they were told half the group
Speaker 2: were told they were about to begin a cycle of
Speaker 2: an anambolic steroid. Now, remember, all of these guys understand
Speaker 2: what steroids is, they are are They all believe that
Speaker 2: these are these essentially these magic pills and so on.
Speaker 2: So but of course, you know, I'm going to tell
Speaker 2: you in reality, they were given place ebos completely inert,
Speaker 2: no active ingredient, just filler.
Speaker 1: So all of the athletes in this group believed that
Speaker 1: they were now on the gear.
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you the specifics in a moment,
Speaker 2: but I'll just start by telling you, so seven weeks
Speaker 2: remember a kind of minimal change. But over the four
Speaker 2: weeks where they were nudge nudge wink wink in inverted
Speaker 2: commas on the gear, the athletes who believed they were
Speaker 2: taking steroids saw crazy strength gains, heavy lifts, more explosive
Speaker 2: training intensity, better confidence, more aggressive, better recovery, less hesitation
Speaker 2: under the bar. And so while nothing changed in their
Speaker 2: physiology from a chemical from including chemicals or drugs, there
Speaker 2: were no hormones added, nothing. There were no anabolic pathways
Speaker 2: that were artificially boosted, so no actual chemical enhancement is
Speaker 2: the clumsy thing that I'm trying to get out of
Speaker 2: my mouth. But the only thing that really changed was
Speaker 2: their belief. They expected to get stronger, so they trained
Speaker 2: like men who were getting stronger, So they pushed harder,
Speaker 2: They recovered with more purpose, They approached the bar with
Speaker 2: more confidence and certainty, and the body followed the mind.
Speaker 1: So when the.
Speaker 2: Athletes finally were told that the pills had been taking
Speaker 2: were placebos, they didn't even know that that was an option.
Speaker 2: They unequivocally absolutely thought they were on steroids. They were
Speaker 2: shocked and some didn't believe it. Some felt embarrassed, and
Speaker 2: some were amazed. Now let me just go to I've
Speaker 2: just got to find it because I've got this written here.
Speaker 2: So the actual bart here we go, all right, So
Speaker 2: vastly level male athletes during all right, So here are
Speaker 2: the actual strength improvements. For those of you who train,
Speaker 2: this will blow your head off. For those of you
Speaker 2: who don't, just trust me. He says, that sounds dodgy,
Speaker 2: doesn't it. So bench press one RM, which is one
Speaker 2: rep max. So in other words, how much they could
Speaker 2: bench press for one repetition absolute maximum effort. So over
Speaker 2: the seven weeks, the first seven weeks where they were
Speaker 2: in inverted Comma's no chemical assistance, the average gain was
Speaker 2: four point three five kilograms. Four point three five kilograms
Speaker 2: across the totality of all of the athletes. Now in
Speaker 2: seven weeks, considering they already have a big background, four
Speaker 2: point three five kilos is modest. It's not nothing, it's something.
Speaker 2: And they'd all improved over seven weeks. So that's good.
Speaker 2: But what we saw over the subsequent four weeks, so
Speaker 2: remember seven weeks four point three five kilo game, and
Speaker 2: then the subsequent four weeks where they are on steroids.
Speaker 2: Nudge nudge, wink wink, we saw a thirteen point five
Speaker 2: kilogram increase, so just over half the time, still with
Speaker 2: no drugs, but they think they've got drugs, and we
Speaker 2: saw three times the level of improvement. Then we go
Speaker 2: to squatting a one rep back squad where you've got
Speaker 2: the bar sitting on your shoulders, on your traps behind
Speaker 2: your head. So in the first seven weeks the average
Speaker 2: improvement without drugs six point eight kilo gain in strength
Speaker 2: or in terms of best lift best one RM score
Speaker 2: for a squad six point eight kilo improvement in seven weeks,
Speaker 2: and then in the subsequent four weeks when they thought
Speaker 2: they were on steroids but weren't, the improvement was eighteen
Speaker 2: to twenty two kilograms on average compared to over seven
Speaker 2: weeks six point eight. Now in four weeks we've got
Speaker 2: somewhere around three to three and a half times the
Speaker 2: improvement in about half the time without drugs, just but
Speaker 2: believing they had drugs. Deadlift there was first first seven
Speaker 2: weeks seven kilo gain, subsequent four weeks over twenty kilo gain.
Speaker 2: Military press, which is pressing basic from your shoulders straight
Speaker 2: up in the air like a vertical press with a weight.
Speaker 2: In the first seven weeks there was pretty much no change,
Speaker 2: so minimal kind of somewhere less than half a kilogram change,
Speaker 2: and during the four week placebo phase of the trial,
Speaker 2: the average was five to seven versus zero. So the
Speaker 2: bottom line is that they really got stronger. They really
Speaker 2: got stronger. There. It wasn't just psychology. It was a
Speaker 2: physiological change, and it was psychology driving physiology. So when
Speaker 2: they believed they were taking steroids, their body performed as
Speaker 2: though they were. Their strength gains tripled on average without
Speaker 2: a single molecule of testosterone or any other steroid entering
Speaker 2: their system. So that's the deal. Well, that's the deal kids.
Speaker 2: A thought is not just a thought. A belief is
Speaker 2: not just a belief. Your mind is not just sitting
Speaker 2: in your skull watching your life go by. It's running
Speaker 2: the show. It's influencing your chemistry. It's affecting your recovery,
Speaker 2: your strength, your pain, your immune system, your immune function,
Speaker 2: your energy, your stress responses, and your overall state and
Speaker 2: your overall experience of life and your ability to heal
Speaker 2: and recover. We saw a guy recover from knee pain
Speaker 2: and return to sport because he believed his need been repaired.
Speaker 2: We saw Parkinson symptoms improve because the brain believed medication
Speaker 2: had been given. We saw hotel workers lose weight and
Speaker 2: improve cardiovascular health just because they understood their work differently.
Speaker 2: And we saw athletes get considerably stronger because they will
Speaker 2: believe they were on a drug that they weren't actually on.
Speaker 2: And none of those changes came from magic or hype
Speaker 2: or superstition. They came from the expectation of change. They
Speaker 2: came from the thinking. They came from meaning, from interpretation,
Speaker 2: from what the brain decided was true, what the brain
Speaker 2: thought was true. The brain was responding to what it
Speaker 2: thought was real, not was not what was actually happening
Speaker 2: in the real world.
Speaker 1: So the question.
Speaker 2: Becomes, what are you telling your brain? What story are
Speaker 2: you running, What assumptions are you reinforcing, What expectations are
Speaker 2: you living inside? What's the internal language that's shaping your body,
Speaker 2: behavior and experiences. Because the consequences of your thoughts are
Speaker 2: not just philosophical, in fact, not at all, they're physiological.
Speaker 2: They show up in blood chemistry, in muscle activation and inflammation,
Speaker 2: in digestion, in movement, in mobility, and heart rate, in mood,
Speaker 2: in recovery, in performance. And it's not just like here's
Speaker 2: the thing. This is not positive thinking. This is not
Speaker 2: be all you can be, you know, unicorns and puppies.
Speaker 1: This is about accurate.
Speaker 2: Thinking, helpful thinking, constructive narratives, and self awareness. So the
Speaker 2: takeaway for this episode is it's kind of simple, like,
Speaker 2: your thoughts are not everything, but.
Speaker 1: They're not nothing. They matter a lot, So learn to
Speaker 2: Notice them, question them, Choose the ones that move you forward,
Speaker 2: interrupt the ones that hold you back, that fuck you up,
Speaker 2: that cost you because your mind is not a passenger
Speaker 2: in your life, it's the driver.