Placebo? Mind over Muscle at Harvard

Wisdom Quarterly; Alia Crum, Ellen Langer (Harvard), Psychological Science (18, 2: 165-171)

(Chauncey McDermott) Mind over matter: "You can do it, Duffy Moon!"

Mind-Set Matters: Exercise and the Placebo Effect
ABSTRACT—In a study testing whether the relationship between exercise and health is moderated by one’s mindset, 84 female room attendants working in seven different hotels were measured on physiological health variables affected by exercise. Those in the informed condition were told that the work they do (cleaning hotel rooms) is good exercise and satisfies the Surgeon General’s recommendations for an active lifestyle. Examples of how their work was exercise were provided. Subjects in the control group were not given this information. Although actual behavior did not change, 4 weeks after the intervention, the informed group perceived themselves to be getting significantly more exercise than before. As a result, compared with the control group, they showed a decrease in weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index. These results support the hypothesis that exercise affects health in part or in whole via the placebo effect.

Shhhh. These are just sugar pills.

The placebo effect is any effect that is not attributed to an actual pharmaceutical drug or remedy, but rather is attributed to the individual’s mind-set (mindless beliefs and expectations).

The therapeutic benefit of the placebo effect is so widely accepted that accounting for it has become a standard in clinical drug trials to distinguish pharmaceutical effects from the placebo effect and the placebo effect from other possible confounding factors, including spontaneous remission and the natural history of the condition (Benson & McCallie, 1979; Brody, 1980; Nesbitt Shanor, 1999; Spiro, 1986). Kirsh and Sapirstein (1998), in a meta-analysis of 2,318 clinical drug trials for antidepressant medication, found that [only] a quarter (25.16%) of the patients’ responses were due to the actual drug effect, another quarter (23.87%) were due to the natural history of depression, and half (50.97%) were due to the placebo effect.

Scholar Shelly Brown: "Bridging science and religion" (news.harvard.edu)

  

Powerful love medicine (glucose, FD&C red)

The placebo effect extends much further than medications or therapy: Subjects exposed to fake poison ivy developed real rashes (Blakeslee, 1998), people imbibing placebo caffeine experienced increased motor performance and heart rate (and other effects congruent with the subjects’ beliefs and not with the pharmacological effects of caffeine; Kirsch & Sapirstein, 1998), and patients given anesthesia and a fake knee operation experienced reduced pain and swelling in their ‘‘healed’’ tendons and ligaments (Blakeslee, 1998). More generally, studies suggest that 60 to 90% of drugs and other therapies prescribed by physicians depend on the placebo effect for their effectiveness (Benson & Freedman, 1996; Nesbitt Shanor, 1999).

The placebo effect does not have to involve inert pills or sham procedures. Symbols, beliefs, and expectations can elicit powerful physiological occurrences, both positive and negative (Hahn & Kleinman, 1983; Roberts, Kewman, & Mercie, 1993).

Prof. Ellen Langer, Harvard University

For example, the mere presence of a doctor increases patients’ blood pressure (the ‘‘white coat effect’’), reinterpreting pain in nonthreatening ways (e.g., as sensations) prompts patients to take fewer sedatives and leave the hospital sooner; and the health decline of cancer patients often has less to do with the actual course of the illness and more to do with their negative expectations regarding the disease (Langer, 1989).

EXERCISE AND THE PLACEBO EFFECT
As the most common health threats are now infectious rather than chronic, remedies have also changed. Doctors now prescribe behavioral changes such as exercise for chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer. We wondered whether the well-known benefits of exercise are in whole or in part the result of the placebo effect. A positive finding would speak to the potentially powerful... More

Anti-aging hormone could make us SMARTER

CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Kat Fabi, Wisdom Quarterly; Jon Hamilton (NPR/SCPR, 5-8-14)

"Free Your Mind" and the seat of your will follow. Meditate for calm and insight.

Anti-aging HORMONE could make us smarter (istockphoto/scpr.org)

 

A hormone associated with longevity also appears to make people's brains work better.
 
The finding in Cell Reports could someday lead to [high priced, synthetic, patented, moderately toxic pharmaceutical] drugs that improve memory and learning, researchers say.
 

Drugs are cool, take more pharmaceuticals!

[Why bother talking about the natural hormone itself, or using it, or getting our own bodies to produce more of it? Why? Nobody's going to make money that way! Oh, capitalism, we take thee for granted and wonder why we must always be pathologized and on drug "treatments." Big Pharma does not sell "cures" for anything; it just wouldn't be profitable.]
 
"We've discovered a way to potentially boost cognition," says Dena Dubal, one of the study's authors who does research on aging and the brain at the University of California, San Francisco.

And that could mean "a very new way to treat diseases," ranging from Alzheimer's to schizophrenia, she says.
 

Three Fates, Clotho on right

The hormone is named Klotho, after the Fate [Buddhist deva] Clotho from Greek mythology who spins the thread of life. Scientists have known for more than a decade that people and animals tend to live longer if they have high levels of Klotho in their bodies.
 
And that led Dubal and researchers at the Gladstone Institutes to wonder whether a hormone that protects the body against aging might also protect the brain. So the team set out to see whether Klotho offered... More

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• 

  Sandra Tsing Loh's year of raging hormones

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Moliere's Tartuffe and Misanthrope Bike Trip

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The "Fifth Beatle" was gay and Jewish

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One day a UFO will crash in Los Angeles. Until then we have to settle for LAX accidents

One day NPR fans will gain a better sense of humor. Till then, SUP?

Does West have monopoly on romantic love?

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Catherine Winter (The Really Big Questions, The World, pri.org); "Big Bang Theory"  VALENTINE'S DAY

Finally, "Big Bang Theory" lives up to its name as Raj and Penny fall into each other's arms.

"The roof (brain), the roof, the roof is on fire!" explains the Bloodhound Gang (salon.com)

 

Romans/Greeks knew "Desire."

Is romantic love a universal emotion? In the West it often seems we live, die, and even kill for love.

(We have "Nothing Higher to Live For"? A Buddhist View of Romantic Love).

Love is passionate, foolish, and cherished. But in many cultures, arranged marriages are the norm. And romantic love is, well, disruptive. It turns out people across the globe feel romantic love, but they do not necessarily act on it.

Yes, people around the world fall in love. That seems like an obvious truth today, but it used to be quite controversial in the social sciences.

"Love feels like you're walking on a beach hearing the sound of waving coming over and over and over again while your feet is touching the sand softly." - Suzette Chu, 30, Shanghai

 

Tell the World in a tee (SpencerFinnley/flickr)

In fact, some scholars still believe that romantic love was invented by European troubadours in the Middle Ages, and that people outside of the Western tradition do not really experience it.
 

“We decided to see if that was true,” says anthropologist Ted Fischer, who teaches at Vanderbilt University.

 

Oh, this is what they're talking about? They think we didn't know about this? (Dan Zen/flickr)

 

In 1992, he and William Jankowiak, an anthropologist at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, did a survey of anthropological research on 166 different cultures around the world.

 

“We looked for evidence of romantic love, and that could have been love poetry, or elopements, or just general descriptions of what we’d consider to be romantic love,” Fischer says. “And we found it in an overwhelming majority of cultures.”

We're gay. State mandates you accept it (TW).

Fischer says in the few places where they didn’t find evidence of love, the anthropologists who did the original studies were not looking for the factors he and Jankowiak were looking for. 

 

So elopements or love-related suicides might have occurred and just not been noted.

 

“So we thought it’s very likely romantic love is found in all cultures,” he says.

 

Jankowiak and Fischer’s paper made a big splash, and today it’s widely accepted that people in cultures outside of the West experience romantic love. More

  

(BBT) Penny finally hits on Sheldon, America's favorite nerd!

Worshiping a "devil" on Valentine's Day

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ven. Bhante, Wisdom Quarterly (COMMENTARY)

We don't like to admit it, but whom do we "worship" on Valentine's Day? Surely, it is not Roman "Saint Valentine" or even the great Italian-American actor Valentino. Is it Clark Gable, Clark Kent, Sofia Vergara, Lady Gaga?

No, since the time of the ancient Romans and Greeks it is a menace in the form of a comely child -- Cupid (cupido, "desire," aka Eros).  
 
"Cupid" in Buddhism is Mara Devaputra, the angelic beguiler, the Lucifer figure, the great Satan when he's angry, the puckish mischief maker when he's out to besot our vulnerable hearts.

Cupid/Mara (wikimedia.org)

Ancient India recognized "Cupid" as Kama-deva (the Indian personification of "sensual desire" called kama as in the famous Hindu classic the Kama Sutra). And many Hindus must give in to Western temptation because of modern American hegemony and the ancient Greco-Romans, which as Bactria/Afghanistan overlapped on northwestern India (Gandhara) many centuries ago.

What does Mara, the great tempter and discourager in Buddhism, want? It is not that living beings fall into the hells or to be tested for the god (Great Brahma). No, his terrible aim is that living beings remain distracted from liberation, freedom, enlightenment, and nirvana and instead wallowing in ever-disappointing sensuality. 

Thx, Catty Purry, you're doing Mara's work!

So from a modest celestial world or heaven in the "Sensual Sphere" (Kama Loka), Mara/Cupid/the Devil makes it his business to keep everyone tempted and running around like Greek and Roman godlings, filled with lust, pride, jealousy, envy, and avarice. This deviant artist captures it:

Greek "Cupid" (aka Roman "Eros") is prominent in the pantheon (Wandering 39 Soul)

Hey, don't judge. The third wheel is still a wheel, and as long as everybody knows. ;-)

   

Language?

Americans lust (Status Fitness Mag)

QUESTION (Robert Thomas): I read a book about the occupation of Japan after WWII. I became suspicious that the emphasis placed by the author on what even then seemed to me to be a simplistic understanding of the idea of the Japanese emperor as a Shinto "divinity" (kami).
 

Understanding of this cultural and spiritual idea (Showa emperors and their place in superstitious Shinto beliefs) is better explained in English texts these days. But it struck me back then that words such as "divine" were likely to have been translated poorly, by persons with little sociological (much less, theological) understanding, to the point that the translated description of their meaning was useless. 

 

Why should we accept that Mandarin-speaking people and English-speaking people have the same thing in mind at all when talking about "romantic love"? How is this not utterly contingent on the competence of translators?

(Big Bang Theory) Yoga, Penny, and Sheldon, the Third Wheel

   

ANSWER (Catherine Winter): Xiaomeng Xu addressed the language question when we talked to her. She said researchers wondered the same thing, but even taking into account language differences, cultural differences showed up on surveys. She called [the] findings "robust." In surveys, people in Eastern countries are more likely to stress negative aspects of love, such as jealousy and heartbreak, than Westerners are. We Westerners tend to have a rosier view of love.
 

Flaming love in Tibet

Producer Matthew Bell (PRI's The World, Feb. 11, 2014)

Jampa Yeshi, 3-26-12 (globalpost.com)

When a 29 year-old Tibetan Buddhist man set himself on fire (another misguided self-immolation) earlier this month to protest cruel Chinese rule there, he was among more than 100 who have chosen this form of shocking suicidal protest. The world might not have heard of any of them except for the writing of blogger Tsering Woeser.
 

Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser on a visit home

Woeser grew up in Tibet, but she now lives in Beijing with her Chinese husband. Catching up with her there in November, she had just returned from a three month trip to Lhasa, the capital of China's Tibet Autonomous Region. LISTEN

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What animals can teach us (audio)

Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Maria Armoudian (The Insighters, Scholars Circle, Pacifica, Jan. 26, 2014); Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, Kathryn Bowers (Goodreads.com)

Don't look at me! You're just anthropomorphizing (ktla.com)

 

I am looking at you (Tess_athey/flickr).

Do animals get depressed? Overeat? Laugh? Feel feelings?

Inspired by an eye-opening consultation at the Los Angeles Zoo, Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D., a cardiologist, embarked upon a project that would reshape how she practiced medicine -- and how we all look at animals.
 

The consultation revealed that monkeys experience the same symptoms of heart failure as her human patients. Beginning with questions about what animals go through, Natterson-Horowitz began informally researching every affliction she encountered in humans to learn whether it happens in animals, too.

It does. Dinosaurs may have had brain cancer, koalas can catch chlamydia (the STD), reindeer seek mind expansion and/or escape by using hallucinogenic mushrooms, stallions self-mutilate, and gorillas experience clinical depression.

• LISTEN NOW: AUDIO (download)
  

Paying butchers is like paying hitmen to kill.

 

Natterson-Horowitz and science writer Kathryn Bowers have dubbed this pan-species approach to medicine zoobiquity (like ubiquity). Here, they present a revelatory understanding of what animals can teach us about the human body and mind, exploring how animal and human commonality can be used to diagnose, treat, and heal patients of all species.

What animals can teach us about being human

You don't buy bacon, do you? Don't tell me you buy bacon.

 

Concerns about the recent explosions of HIV, West Nile Virus, and other avian and swine flus that originate in animals have encouraged new efforts on a global scale to bridge the gap between animal and human medicine for the benefit of both. Zoobiquity is the first book to explore many of the overlapping human and animal health issues. It provides new insight into the treatment of diseases including diabetes (from the sugar and starch we eat), cancer (from the pollution), heart ailments (from stress), and mental illnesses (from all causes).

 

It is even bigger than health, however. It encompasses much more than our human diseases and how to cure them. It sheds light on the evolution of hierarchies and similarities between a tribe of apes and a Fortune 500 company. 

It suggests that the ways we run our political and justice systems may overlap with how animals protect and defend their territories -- and that examining this possibility in a scientifically credible way could help strengthen our institutions.

 

It dangles the possibility that human parenting could be informed by a greater knowledge and respect for how our animal cousins solve issues of childcare, sibling rivalry, and infertility. More