I ran across an article this morning which really sent my blood pressure spiking. Doctors, it turns out, commonly prescribe placebos to patients, with over half the doctors in a Chicago study admitting that they’d done so in the past.
Sure, there are valid uses for placebos. Take, for instance, the recent study that put haloperidol and risperidone, two longstanding Johnson & Johnson drugs, to the test. The study found that placebos were more effective than the two antipsychotic drugs commonly prescribed to treat aggression in mentally disabled people. The results proved that the medications were ineffective and, since they both have significant side effects, shouldn’t be prescribed in most cases.
But surely the practice raises questions about medical ethics and maybe even contributes to the rising cost of individual health insurance? After all, thanks to this practice, both patients and insurance companies wind up paying prescription prices for what’s essentially sugar capsules, all because some doctor decided to go with his/her hunch that a patient wasn’t really sick to begin with.
That’s a bad thing, right?
Then I ran across a study about the placebo effect, exercise and obesity that blew my mind. In it, psychologists studied a group of hotel maids and found that those who believe their job involved little to no exercise were heavier and had higher blood pressure and hip-to-waist ratios than maids who believed their jobs were physically demanding.
But, wait. It gets better!
The experts, led by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer, split the maids into two groups. One group was educated about how many calories they burned walking, lifting, carrying things, etc., in the course of their daily work. The other group was left in the dark.
One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio — and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.
That’s right: the only change they made was believing they were getting more exercise and — voila! — their weight and blood pressure improved. Those are actual physical changes brought on by nothing more than changing a person’s perception of themselves and their activities.
For those of us struggling to lose weight, this study emphasizes just how much our mental outlook can work for or against us in the process.
If your mental tape constantly plays a message in your mind that says you’re a lazy slug, that you don’t get any exercise, that you’re fat because all you do is go to work and come home to sit around all evening, perhaps it’s time to swap it for one that recognizes the activity you do get. Walking from your car to your desk, spending your day on your feet giving presentations or running after children, folding clothes, lugging briefcases or groceries or laundry baskets: those things add up.
Giving yourself a pat on the back for the activity you do naturally fit into your day isn’t just a great way to stretch those triceps and deltoid muscles. It might also be the key to whittling your waistline, too.
Chubby Mommy 