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Fitness — it's all in the head

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Thursday, February 15, 2007 | 02:59 PM ET

By Peter Hadzipetros

So you think you're getting a good workout? Well, it could be that if you're convinced that what you're doing is making you fitter, you may actually be getting fitter — even if you're not really getting much of a workout.

It's like those drug trials — where half the people get the real drug the big drug company wants to eventually sell us and the other half get a dummy pill. Sometimes the folks on the placebo get the same benefits as the researchers expect from the people on the real medicine. It's called The Placebo Effect.

Turns out it may hold true for exercise as well.

A Harvard psychology professor and her student monitored a group of Boston hotel workers for four weeks. Half were told that their daily workload of cleaning 15 rooms a day was enough to keep them fit and healthy. The other half weren't given that message.

Dr. Helen J. Langer and Alia J. Crum checked back with the workers after the four weeks. They found that the group that had been told they were getting on-the-job exercise had lost an average of two pounds, lowered their blood pressure by 10 per cent, and had reduced their percentages of body fat, body mass index and the size of their waist in relation to their hips.

These are all signs of improved fitness.

The group that didn't get the message didn't see the benefits.

Crum and Langer say it's not clear whether telling the workers that they were getting enough exercise to keep them fit is what actually made them get fitter or whether the message helped them make other changes that resulted in fitness improvements.

What is clear, they wrote, is that health is "significantly affected by mindset."

The placebo effect has an evil twin. The nocebo effect. The term was coined in 1961 by researcher Walter Kennedy to describe a patient's negative expectation of a drug or course of treatment. He found that — in some patients — if they expected they would suffer a drug's predictable negative side effects, they would actually suffer them. If you set your mind to it, you help create the conditions for bad things to happen.

So if you believe there's no point in getting off the couch to try to increase your level of activity, there probably isn't.

It's like Yogi Berra said: "Ninety per cent of the game is half mental."

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Comments (4)

Editorsrile

Ottawa

The folks who offered comments obviously did not comprehend the salient points in the article. Neither did they grasp its premise. Pity.

Posted March 1, 2007 01:24 PM

Troy Popwell

Is this a joke or is it a real survey. First of all what you do at work should not play a role in an exercise program.What is next- if you watch sports on t.v. you get fit. What about the other side. If you sit all day in one area are you going to get progressively overweight. Maybe you could just think about walking or jogging or better yet maybe even exercise. Thats the one solution that always works- if you exercise properly and educate yourself on what you need to do for execise you will be fit. But sooner or later we will find a way to do it and still be lazy and finally it will be easy. Thats just it- it's not easy but nothing is. Participaction-get up and do it.

Posted February 20, 2007 12:22 PM

Mickey

Delta

True, The Government should divert funds towards mental makeup than just spending all of health budget on research and medication.
Especially, the cancer. Hope it is curable just with a mindset!

Posted February 19, 2007 03:12 PM

NUGGz

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Fitness — it's all in the head

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Thursday, February 15, 2007 | 02:59 PM ET

By Peter Hadzipetros

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