I Think, Therefore I Exercise
A fascinating story on NPR about exercise and the placebo effect. Researchers studied hotel maids with some pretty incredible results. Apparently, believing that you’re exercising when you’re doing everyday activities can make a real difference. Check it out:
[H]otel maids spend the majority of their days lugging heavy equipment around endless hallways. Basically, almost every moment of their working lives is spent engaged in some kind of physical activity. But [researcher Ellen] Langer found that… [m]ore than one-third reported they didn’t get any exercise at all. “Given that they are exercising all day long,” Langer says, “that seemed to be bizarre.”
What was even more bizarre, she says, was that, despite the fact all of the women in her study far exceeded the U.S. surgeon general’s recommendation for daily exercise, the bodies of the women did not seem to benefit from their activity… So Langer set about changing perceptions.
She divided 84 maids into two groups. With one group, researchers carefully went through each of the tasks they did each day, explaining how many calories those tasks burned. They were informed that the activity already met the surgeon general’s definition of an active lifestyle. The other group was given no information at all.
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.
The article talks about some possible explanations, but the placebo effect does seem to be at work here. Maybe if we just acknowledge to ourselves that what we’re doing is exercising, we’ll see health benefits. I hereby acknowledge that walking up and down the stairs at work is exercise! I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks to Becky for the link.
Posted by mo pie
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My bet is that it is little more than feeling ok with yourself. Some of us need an external influence to make that huge leap – yes – you ARE pretty, yes you DO exercise, you ARE healthy…
The power of positive thinking…
I work as a housekeeper, and i’m telling you being drenched in sweat is not a placebo effect. it’s really hard work, and you do lose weight. But after a while the body ajusts and you don’t feel that is as hard as it was in the beginning. I didn’t lose as much weight as i lost inches. The fat transforms into muscles. wich also means that the body burns more when your not doing anything at all. wich leads to more weight loss.
I heard this one too, along with the critique of the “findings.” They didn’t track for any other factor (I know that if I change one unhealthy habit, like more exercise) I’m likely to change others as well. They also didn’t consider normal weight fluctuations, considering the average change is a whopping three pounds. I “gain/lose” more than that in water weight once a month. Blah for junk science, the media really loves it :-)
On the inevitable other hand, though, I do believe in mind over matter to some extent. I think I might benefit from exercise more when I’m conscious of how I’m moving and how my body reacts to movement. It’s also an important point that many people are sedentary because they have an image of “exercise” as grueling circuit training at a crowded gym. Granted, these maids do the equivelent, hauling their equipment up and down flights of stairs, scrubbing, etc.
I really shouldn’t leave comments until I’ve had coffee :-)
This reminds me of a TIME magazine article many months ago that was talking about some studies done on the brain that indicated the possibility that thinking about doing something has nearly the same impact on the brain as actually doing it.
Personally, I think this kind of thing just speaks once more to the vast, uncharted depths of what we plain old don’t know about the human body.
I’m veering off on a tangent here.
I tend to think belief is very powerful. I mean that in the sense that what we believe determines much of our behavior. An example: I know I experience feelings of greater vitality when I believe that I am worthy, robust and healthy. On those days, I deliver everything with energy – work, workout, sex, affection, volunteer effort.
On the days (or months) when I believe I’m a worthless dollop of feces, unworthy of respect, love or second chances, I feel drained and don’t do things I’d like to do.
If you’re too tired to ‘exercise’ you might think, what’s the point in bothering with the diet soda instead of regular, etc. Once you find out you’re exercising more than most people without doing anything different it might give you incentive to make other small changes that will improve your health even if it doesn’t lead to long term weight loss, it might cause a small short term loss.
“The fat transforms into muscles”
This is a myth. Fat cells are different from muscle cells. Your fat cells shrank and your muscle cells increased. Same in reverse: many people think muscle turns into fat. Not true.
isnt it possible that once they knew it counted as excercise and thought it may be healthy for them..they ended up working harder..which then resulted in smaller measurements/lost weight?
I worked for UPS in college and man, I was working out on the job for sure! I guess it’s not like going to the gym…but my calves lookes awesome! I’ve really noticed that I don’t have as much energy working at a desk job. Plus I barely see the light of day and I get sick more often. Booo.