"Thinking doth make it so," wrote Shakespeare, poetic words to be sure, but also a perfect description of the placebo effect. In clinical studies, people in "the placebo group" unknowingly take a fake form of the item being tested (often a sugar pill), usually having been told it is real medicine that will make them better -- and often, they do indeed get better. Some consider it one of science's many mysteries, but I think it is a powerful statement of our ability to heal ourselves. Now, that's taken to a whole different level in research that involved hotel housekeepers and weight loss.
In a study involving 84 female housekeepers, ages 18 to 55, psychologist Ellen J. Langer, PhD, a professor at Harvard, told half the women that their regular work -- cleaning about 15 rooms a day, for 20 to 30 minutes each -- was enough to meet the guidelines for healthy exercise. She said nothing about this to the other women, although their workload was identical to the first group.
The results just four weeks later were fairly amazing. The control group -- which, remember, had heard nothing that equated their work with exercise -- did not show any physical changes. The women in the informed group, though, had lost an average of two pounds... their systolic blood pressure (the top number) had dropped by 10%... they had decreased body fat by 0.5%... and reduced their body mass index number by .35% of a point. You might argue that these are not dazzling drops or changes -- until you consider the fact that these women did nothing different from the other group -- and did not change their habits at all -- and yet they achieved results.
When I spoke with Dr. Langer, I asked if the women might have brought new vigor to their work, thinking if it was so good for them they'd add some extra zip. But no, she told me, she investigated that possibility and found it not to be true. She attributes the physical changes in the women strictly to alterations in their thought process -- simply that they thought they were achieving healthy exercise patterns, and so they did. Our thoughts are part of our physiology, she says, not at all separate from our bodies. To illustrate, she describes how some people flinch visibly at the sight of a snake or other situation they fear or find loathsome. How would the body know to do that, other than because of the mind's action on it?
This study was one in a series Dr. Langer has undertaken on mindfulness -- which she defines as "actively noticing new things that keeps us in the present." The mind and body are not separate entities, she says, and her expectation is that these experiments will help show that. In the meantime, she says, all of us can accrue additional health benefits by being mindful about how each and every physical motion, not just formal exercise, helps us be healthier.
Source(s):
Ellen J. Langer, PhD, professor of psychology, Harvard University, Boston.
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