The Power of Expectation In Determining Your Health Outcomes
Is you mind your greatest ally or worst enemy?
Hello there! I am seeing a LOT of new readers and followers right now and I wanted to say hello and welcome! The Naturalized Human brings together the science and human experience of the mind-body-food connection. I have a passion for growing food and I am fascinated at how the food we eat impacts everything about our minds and bodies. I come at this topic as a biologist and agrologist with more than 25 years of small scale farming experience. I want to empower everyone to take a vested interest in their food, where it comes from, and how to use it effectively for wellness.
I am fascinated by the placebo effect.
I remember learning about “controls” in science class and how important it was to design experiments with both test groups and control groups to eliminate bias inherent from researchers and participants. Maybe that outcome would have happened even if you did nothing at all?
It works like this. You set up an experiment to test variables and determine which one(s) influence the outcome in a specific way. Your treatments are the things that you do or change before you measure a response. The control is like a blank treatment where you do everything exactly the same EXCEPT there is no active ingredient, manipulation or change created for this group. A placebo effect happens when the control group still shows the expected result, even though nothing was done to them/for them.
Let’s say you want to determine if a newly discovered plant moves towards or away from the light (photo-positive or photo-negative response). You can’t just turn on a light and see what happens. Because what if the plant would have done the same thing in total darkness and you simply didn’t look for that. Your design has to anticipate possible responses and be able to rule in or rule out explanations for what you see happen.
Our expectations change the game
Working with humans (and other sentient beings) creates a whole different level of complications because our expectations come into play.
If we think something is going to happen we start behaving as if it is already happening.
Thus, if we go to the doctor and describe our symptoms, and the doctor hands us a pill telling us it will take away those symptoms, 30 to 60% of people will show improvements, even if the pills are just sugar pills. That is the placebo effect.
Belief, not active ingredients, creates the desired outcome.
And this is the crux of my fascination. Because our minds are so powerful, and the placebo effect is so well documented, but we still seem to just be scratching the surface in our understanding of how our minds create wellness or dis-ease in the body.
What we believe affects what we perceive.
The placebo effect doesn’t mean that 30 to 60% of what ails us is imaginary.
If you experience a lot of stress, you may develop high blood pressure, stomach issues, anxiety or depression - real physical symptoms caused by an external trigger coming at us through our brains/our perceptions. The fact that stress is the cause doesn’t make those physical symptoms less real or less dangerous to our health.
The part that fascinates me is why we don’t USE the placebo effect to our advantage so much more. The standard answer usually comes down to ethics.
It is unethical to deny someone a life-saving treatment in the name of science. Sure. It is also unethical to withhold a known effective treatment in order to compare results with a new drug. That means for the most part, experiments with placebo controls for drug trials can only be used when there is no known effective cure which may justify the search for one.
But if we step away from the life or death, major disease scenarios, 30 to 60% of people could be helped, or have their symptoms reduced or eliminated, by believing in a particular treatment or result.
Doesn’t that give you pause? Imagine how your beliefs are impacting your health right now. What happens when you believe your pain is chronic, or that nothing good ever happens to you, or that you can’t lose weight?
What’s even more interesting is that the placebo effect can work even if you know it is a placebo?
Do you see how complicated this becomes? Think about how millions of people, myself included, believe that vitamin supplements help make them feel better. (Don’t get me started on the ineffective study designs that have accompanied the debate over the use of supplements!) A belief that a treatment is effective can influence the results a participant experiences AND influence how the researcher actually interprets and presents those results in a paper. It doesn’t even necessarily matter if you KNOW that it may be a placebo effect. The belief can trigger a positive response.
And it isn’t limited to drug-based issues. I go to a Registered Massage Therapist (RMT). I believe that massage helps me feel better and creates lasting benefits in my body. She tells me other people come with doubts and apprehensions and do not find massage helpful. They don’t see improvements. Is it my expectation that my RMT can alleviate my pain that creates such great results for me?
It can even come down to our language
This week
wrote about the distinction between calling himself an Expat vs an Immigrant when talking about his impending move to Spain. He rightly points out that there are different connotations and behaviors associated with these two very different labels for someone who no longer lives in their home nation.Just by choosing to think of himself as an immigrant in Spain, Rocco changes his expectations for how he will behave, the activities he will participate in and how he interacts with locals. The choice is quite literally about whether you see yourself as a part of the new culture or holding oneself apart by still keeping a former identity forefront.
We do this all the time with our health and wellness
The language we use to describe ourselves, our day, or our circumstances influences what we perceive, how we perceive it and what impacts that will have on our physical bodies.
Tony Robbins says this best with his descriptions of how our choice of words influences us. Are you angry or just upset? Are you upset or just annoyed? Are you annoyed or just irritated? Are you irritated or simply peeved?
We have the power to walk ourselves out of anger simply by de-escalating how we talk about what we are experiencing. Anger is such a waste of energy.
We have the power to lift ourselves by shifting our energy into positive emotions too.
We can train ourselves to gravitate to joy, calm, ease, and flow. These are mental states we can reach quickly with a little practice and then spend more of our day focused there.
The things you notice and respond to when you are joyful and smiling are very different than the things you notice when you are angry, fearful or sad. Your ability to manage stress, pain, and symptoms of disease is affected by your mental state.
You can’t quite fake it until you make it
It isn’t quite as simple as saying the words, “I am joyful” when you really are angry or sad. It isn’t about faking your emotions or bottling up negativity. That isn’t a placebo effect.
It’s about the power of our underlying beliefs to shape how we respond and function in the world. As you shift your energy into positive levels, whether through meditation, exercise, time in nature, time in water, etc, you impact your entire body and how it functions.
If I accept that my mind is so powerful that just suggestion (aka a placebo) is enough to influence the degree to which I experience pain, stress, comfort or joy, why wouldn’t I use that to my absolute advantage? Does calling it a placebo take away its potency? It truly boggles the mind.
Do you have an example of how your expectations influenced your health? Tell us in the comments.
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Thank you for the mention, Sue. I appreciate it.
Great article as usual. Ever since I started reading research the placebo effect and distortions such as social desirability in survey research has fascinated me.