Good a team.
So today we're talking about something that everyone experiences, but very few people really understand.
We talk about it on this show quite a bit.
I talk about it quite a bit, but I wanted to do a different kind of a deep dive into the topic. And we're talking about thoughts, specifically, we're talking about the potential ramifications and consequences good and bad of thinking. You know me, I'm fucking obsessed with the mind. I'm obsessed with thinking. I'm obsessed with what we can do with our mind. I think it is the most misunderstood yet powerful component of the human experience. I don't think
we know how to use our mind properly. I don't know that we ever will. I think, you know, this is something I think about a lot. It's something I study a lot. I'm doing a PhD in it, blah blah blah blah, and I'm still I'm still baby stepping it, Nonetheles.
So I think it's really good to talk about. That's what we're going to do.
So we're talking about thoughts, and they're not just ideas floating.
Around in your head, but they are a.
Physiological reality, or they can have a physiological consequence that's for sure. The truth that a single thought can change what's going on in your body.
How amazing is that.
So your body's not responding to an event or a situation, or some change in some kind of external stimuli, but rather your thoughts. A single thought can change your blood pressure or what's happening with your hormones and your breathing and your muscle tension, and your immune system and your nervous system.
I think most people think of thoughts.
As kind of intangible, harmless, weightless, just kind of mental activity, something that happens in the background, something that's kind of separate to the body, something that has no real consequence unless we act on the thought. But that's actually wrong, it's completely wrong. So your body is not responding to the world. I'm going to say that again. Your body is not responding to the world. Your body is responding
to your interpretation of the world. Your body is responding to the meaning that you create through that window through which you observe and process and understand and dissect and tell stories about the world. Your body is responding to the story that your mind is telling you about what is going on. Your brain is running your physiology moment to moment based on what it believes is happening.
I'm going to say that again. Your brain.
Is running your physiology moment to moment based on what your brain thinks.
Is happening, not what's happening.
If you're in the middle of a shitty situation, but you think it's a shitty situation, guess what's happening in your body not bad stuff, good stuff.
If you're in a what.
For other people would be a chaotic circumstance or environment or environment, but in the middle of that outward kind of chaos, you are calm. Guess what's happening with your nervous system. It's calm, it's parasympathetic, not sympathetic. Guess what's going on with your heart rate. It's low, not high,
your blood pressure low, not high. Not because you're in a calm situation, but because you interpret that thing as calm, as not a problem, as not chaotic, as not a catastrophe, and as a result, your physiology is reflective of the story, not.
The situation or circumstance.
This is why a stressful thought can increase our heart rate without anything happening.
It's why embarrassment can make your face go red.
It's why fear can make your stomach drop in inverted commas, It's why worry can literally make you feel sick. It's why anticipation of something can give you goose bumps. The thought is the trigger. The body is the response to the trigger the thought. The body just does what it's told to do, essentially, or the body just does what makes sense to the body in accordance with the information in inverted commas, information I should really say interpretation that it's getting.
So today we're going to explore all that.
You know that I've been fascinated with place ebos and no cibos and you're not sure exactly what that means. We're going to have a look at how belief can reduce pain, change movement, alter healing, and influence the very chemicals that your brain produces. We're going to look at the place Ebo and no Cibo effect and what happens when your brain decides that something is safe or dangerous,
or possible or hopeless or already improving. Because when you understand that a thought can change your chemistry, I mean really understand it and understand that an expectation can change your nervous system and understand that your belief can change your biology. You start to realize that your mind is not just observing life, it's shaping it literally physically in real time. And this is the consequence of thought. So let's start here. I want to share some stories with
you today, which I fucking love. So today's quite it's almost like a storytelling episode.
I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think.
But I want to tell you so story one I want to share with you I'm calling the knee surgery that wasn't the knee surgery that wasn't. So in the nine nineties, there was a surgeon named doctor Bruce Moseley. He worked out of primarily out of Houston. He worked with NBA teams, he worked with elite athletes, and he kept seeing the same thing, and that was arthroscopic knee
surgery for osteos for osteoarthritis. And it often didn't seem really to do much clinically or medically or physiologically, but somehow, for some reason, patients swore by it, they swore that it helped. But him from a clinical and an observational perspective,
he didn't really think it did much. But what he did observe was that the people who had the operation really believed right despite what he saw physically, clinically, medically, what he observed was that those people really believed that the operation did something. So he did something really a little bit fucking sneaky. Well not that sneaky because it was a controlled study, but he ran a controlled study with three groups and he did surgery in inverted commas
on these three groups. So group one that had the surgery, they had the proper surgery. They had the full arthroscopic surgery, that cleaning out of the old you know people going, no, I'm just going in to get the knee cleaned out. Well that's that's generally, this is arthroscopic surgery. That's what they're talking about.
So Group one.
Had the cleaning out of the knee, they had the actual operation. Group two, I don't actually know exactly what this is. I couldn't find it in the research specifically, but they had a partial procedure, they had something done, but not the full surgery. And Group three they had placebo surgery. They had fuck all done. So they the patients were wheeled into the theater, they were put under anesthesia.
There were three small incisions made in the knee, so they thought they were having like it replicated the actual surgery, but there was no surgery done. There was no actual surgical repair, so they took them into theater, they put them under anesthetic. I don't think i'd want that done anyway. They made some small cuts in their knee, the same cuts as the people who had the actual surgery would have, so when they came out of surgery looked like that
had surgery, but nothing was actually done. There was nothing invasive in their knee at all. So they stitched them back up, not having had an operation, and sent them.
Back to rehab as normal.
Now, the patients did not know which group they are in, which of the three groups are in. Also, interestingly, the surgeons performing the follow up assessments and the treatment team, the clinicians, they didn't know.
Even And so what was the result.
Well, the placebo surgery patients improved just as much, just as much as those who had the actual surgery surgery. In fact, in some measures, they improved more patients who had nothing done. In fact, so there was nothing invasive done inside the knee, They reported less pain, They reported better mobility and greater confidence walking and climbing the stairs.
One of the patients in the plus C bow group, who had lots of trouble, actually returned to playing professional basketball, having no idea that nothing had actually been done inside his knee. Yes, he had three superficial cuts, but there was no real surgery. So why does this matter. Why
does this matter? Well, the surgery had been working for years and the good doc believes and evidence would suggest that it was working not because of any kind of physiological or mechanical fix, but rather because the patients believed that something had been repaired. Doctors believed that they were helping everyone doc does, patients, family, Everyone expected improvement and
the brain delivered the change. So this study really blew up the orthopedics world when it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in the early two thousands. So if you want to look it up, I think it was two thousand and two. And it forced healthcare to confront something that was like an uncomfortable or an inconvenient truth, and that is that belief can trigger physical
recovery pathways that looked like the result of surgery. And one of the ever present questions for me around this is why, why is this stuff? Why is understanding place ebos, understanding how the mind can heal the body, Understanding the potential and the power of this mind body connection, this psychology physiology link. I know the answer, by the way, but I'm going to ask the question.
The question is why the fuck are we not studying this?
Why is this not the most important question being asked and answered in health, in recovery, in medicine, in wellness, and of course the question is because if all of a sudden we could heal ourselves. Imagine if we learned how to actually heal ourselves from nearly everything and anything. Imagine if we could figure out that I can actually lower my blood pressure by doing this or doing without medication. I'm not suggesting you stop any medication, by the way,
This is not what today is about. I'm just opening the door on this fascinating reality that there are things that happen in medicine and outside of medicine, in healing and in health that make in inverted commas no sense. There would be lots of organizations and companies and sellers of pills and powders and potions and surgeries. Of course, who would suffer incredibly financially if we all figured out that we didn't need all of the things we think
we do. Again, don't confuse what I'm saying. I definitely think medicine and clinical treatment and doctors and nurses and all of that. You know, of course, there's a place, there's a place. But this is also a really fucking door to open.
All right. Story number two, I love this one.
So I'm calling this the Parkinson's dopamine that wasn't so let me explain that. So Parkinston Parkinson's disease involves the loss of dopamine producing neurons, those feel good neurons, and that causes tremors because a whole lot of neurological issues. It causes difficulty with movement, with walking, with mobility, with balance, with control, with all of those things.
So one of.
The things that happens with Parkinson's is that these neurons are.
Destroyed or lost.
And in the early two thousands, researchers ran a trial to test a new drug, which researchers are always doing. And of course these need to be double blind studies, where some people are getting a medication, some people are not. And of course, as as is commonplace in this kind of research, some participants got the actual medication and some got a place ebo.
Of course, nobody knows what they're on.
People don't know whether or not they're getting the real medication or a pill full of nothing. And what happened, and again you know it's coming, but I'm going to tell you anyway, what happens shocked everybody because the placebo group, so the people who've got no drug, they thought they were getting a drug, or the thought they might have been getting a drug.
And time and time.
Again, it seems that people who do this kind of research, whether or not whatever group they're in, most people seem to think that they're getting the drug.
I don't know what that is about. That's another episode.
But anyway, the placebo groups, so the group that were taking nothing, nothing with any therapeutic, I think their starch I think it's just starched the tablets. Anyway, So they showed reduced tremors, smoother movement, improved walking, better facial control. But like the really fucking astonishing bit of this research in their study in particular, was what happened with the
brain scans. So the placebo patients, the people that were getting nothing, they thought they were getting something, and there was a huge surge of dopamine. Remember they're neurons that produced dopamine are badly affected. But for some reason the patient's taking nothing, all of a sudden, who couldn't generally produce dopamine at any significant level, all of a sudden, dopamine was flooding their brain. Not pretend dopamine, but actual, real,
measurable dopamine. The brain produced the chemical because the person believed they.
Were beating treatment. They were being treated, I'm.
Going to say that again, So they when they looked at their brain, their brain was flooded with dopamine. Even though these people who couldn't generally produce any real level of dopamine were not getting any drug to help them do so. But because they thought they were being treated,
and this wasn't imagination, this was neurochemical reality. So their expectation activated part of the brain called the nuclear circumbence, and that triggers dopamine release and temporarily restored for them movement function, balance, coordination, control, smooth out tremors, all of these things that were considered to be phiz ieologically impossible without medication, but they I guess they medicated themselves with their mind.
So why does this matter? Well, Parkinson's is.
A neurological disease, hard physical neurodegeneration, real biological physiological.
Damage.
Yet belief alone for these people change their neurochemistry and behavior. So the placebo didn't just change how they felt. It wasn't just a psychological shift or an emotional shift. So it didn't just change how they felt. It literally changed how their brain worked. And then as a byproduct of that, what was happening in their brain, then what was happening in their nervous system. More broadly, what was happening you know, in their muscular system, neuromuscular combination and so on.
So this forced neuroscience to.
Rethink this particular study for neuroscience to rethink the mind body boundary, the role of expectation in motor symptoms, and how belief interacts with the basil ganglia also a crucial.
Part of the brain with this and dopamine pathways.
And as a consequent this research became one of the strongest demonstrations that the brain is not a passenger, it's the driver and So what's the takeaway.
I guess the takeaway is that your.
Brain isn't reacting to reality, it's reacting to what it thinks reality is.
Alright, I've got a few more. This one's a belter.
So story three is called the hotel housekeepers who lost weight by changing their thinking. So Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer Ellen el En a lady ran a study in the middle of the two thousands. In the mid two thousands with hotel room at tenant. So these ladies, they work for hotels. They cleaned rooms all day, They changed lenin, they vacuumed, they scrub bathways, They walked miles and miles
or kilometers and kilometers of hallways. I would think, I mean, I don't know, but I would guess somebody's step count who does this kind of job would have to be well, well over fifteen to twenty thousand steps a day, maybe heading towards thirty but anyway, so they were moving a lot, a lot. In other words, they were doing the equivalent of moderate to vigorous exercise every day. But when they interviewed all of these women, most of them didn't think
of their work as exercise. In fact, most of them considered themselves as being somewhat inactive. So I'm going to say that again, they didn't really think of their work as exercise or working out. They believed that they weren't active at all and described most of them described themselves as not really exercising, and as a result, their bodies matched their beliefs.
Most of them had.
Higher blood pressure, higher body fat, and lower perceived fitness. So the researcher Ellen Langer taught one group, actually educated them, taught them that they were already doing what counted as exercise. She educated them about energy expenditure, heart rate elevation, calorie burning, muscle conditioning, and that was it.
Like there was She just ed.
She actually explained to them quite clearly, succinctly in Layman's terms, that what they.
Were doing was already.
They were working out, they were exercising, they were moving a lot, and that their job was the equivalent of a daily moderate to vigorous exercise program. They were already doing it, so nothing else changed. They just told them this. They just informed this them of this. They just gave them new information. So now the women were doing the exact same thing, but they had a new story. They had a new belief, They had new awareness, they had
new understanding, they had new thinking. So nothing else changed, no dietary change. They didn't walk anymore steps. There was no adjustment or change to their routine. The other group, there were two groups, the other group, they didn't get that. They got no information, and then they tracked Both groups over the next four were hicks. This is fucking hilarious anyway,
And what happened after four weeks. The group who now believed and understood that they were exercising, lost body fat, lost weight across the board, saw lower blood pressure, and improved waste to hip ratios, so reduction in waste and hip measurements. And again, they didn't change anything about their behavior. The only change was how they thought about what they were already doing. Their physiology shifted to match their new self perception.
I'm going to say it again. The only change was not what they were doing.
They didn't eat less, they didn't move more, they didn't have some new strategy. Everything was groundhog day. It was exactly as it was before. They were doing the same thing, the same way, the same job, in the same environment, but all of a sudden they had a new understanding and new awareness. They were thinking differently and their physiology, that is, their body changed and what was happening in their body changed to match their new thinking or to
match their new self perception. And the other group nothing, no changes status quo. So so why does this matter so.
Well?
It wasn't positive thinking or motivational quotes. It was cognitive reframing. It was cognitive.
It was a different story.
And as a result of that, we saw measurable metabolic change, cardiovascular change, health change. And it suggests that your body doesn't respond to just what you do, but it also responds to your understanding of what you're doing or what you believe you're doing. So expectation shapes hormone signaling, a sympathetic tone, which is your level of sympathetic nervous system activation, metabolic efficiency, how well your body metabolizes calories, energy, motivation.
And effort and recovery.
So in a snapshot, with this study, especially, I guess, meaning Alter's biology, I've got all the references for all of these if you ever want. But yeah, that was done across that study that was Crumb and Langer two thousand and seven. It was eighty four participants So the control group was forty and the participants were forty four, so it's not a massive study, but it was very controlled and if nothing else, you know, it's fascinating. No
behavior or activity level or dietary changes happened. Only the meaning of their existing work was reframed, and as a result they saw measurable, observable, real actual changes in their body. So the next one's interesting too. This is almost the
well it's not almost, it's the reverse. So this time, rather than plus cebo, where we think something good or we take an inert thing thinking it's not inert, it's rather powerful and as a result we get a powerful outcome despite the fact that there was no power in the thing, the drug, the medicine, the whatever. No cibo is talking about when a negative expectation or belief causes a negative physical or psychological response, even though the treatment or the situation itself is harmless.
So in other words, if.
A place ebo makes you feel better because you believe it, and no cibo spell noc ebo makes you feel worse, like literally worse and also physically worse, with negative physical consequences. Quite often, as you'll hear in a moment because you expect something bad has happened.
So I'm going to say that again.
If a placebo makes you better, like literally makes you better because you believe it, and no CIBO will make you worse.
Because you expect something to happen.
So, for example, someone who's told a medication has strong side effects, they start experiencing those side effects even if they're given a sugar pill. And again there's not psychosmatic.
These are real.
These are real physical side effects. A person believes the harmless smell is toxic, so they smell something another example of a nose. They smell something and they think that that is a toxic thing despite the fact that it's harmless. There's there's no danger. Nonetheless, they develop headaches and nauseas, nausea, and they start to panic. Being told you're back, for example,
is damaged when it's not really damaged. Maybe you've got something minor, but all of a sudden, we've got increased pain, fear and muscle tension, restricted movement, and a level of disability that's associated more to the story than it is what's actually happening with the back. So the key idea with a no c B is that the expectation of harm can create real harm, actual harm. All right, So the next story that I want to share with you is I'm finding my space. Okay, So here it is.
It's called the plus Ebo overdose, or we can call it the no Siebo effect. So in the late nine nineties, a bloke enrolled in a clinical trial for an antidepressant. Half the participants were receiving the actual medical medication and half were plus were receiving plus ebos so sugar tablets.
They looked exactly the same.
They're identical, so you couldn't even the team couldn't discern them what was what unless they knew, of course, but to look at they're identical. So one was the drug, the other had no active ingredient, no drugs, So he didn't know which group he was in. He was in this trial, and one day, during a moment of acute emotional distress, we'll call it that, he decided to overdose. So he got all of the pills that he had remaining, which was twenty nine pills, believing that he was sure
that he was on the real drug. As I said to you before, most people think, even when they know there's a fifty to fifty chance. For whatever reason, people who are in these trials, most if there's one hundred people in the trial and fifty are on the drug and fifty and not the majority of people for whatever reason feel like they are on the drug. And probably it's because they're having very real physical changes, but they're unaware of the fact that they're actually creating the changes,
not the drug. Anyway, back to the dude, So one day he was having a let's just go with him, was having a horrendous day. He was having a terrible day, and he decided to overdose. He swallowed twenty nine pills from his bottle, believing that they were real, and within minutes, his blood pressure crashed, his heart rate spiked, he became faint, shaky, and physically un stable. He was rushed to hospital, to the emergency department, and by the time he got there
he was in a critical condition. And doctors tried quite they tried IV fluids, cardiac monitoring, stabilization protocols, but nothing was helping. Was he was getting worse, slightly worse. His body was responding as if he was dying from a toxic overdose. So I'm just going to say that his body was responding, so all the physiological signs that he had actually taken a toxic level of a drug. His body was demonstrating that that was real. That the and
that the team did not know. They did not know, so that the medical team that I'm talking about in the hospital, they didn't know that he hadn't actually taken a drug. Then the coordinator of the trial arrived at the hospital with all of the lab records. As it turns out, you know, I'm going to tell you this already, but the dude, so the guy who'd taken the twenty nine pills, he'd taken a placebo twenty nine times. He wasn't in the medicated group, he wasn't using the actual
drug that was being tried. He'd been taking a placebo the whole time. So no active drug, no biochemical agent, nothing real about that at all, just pills made of starch. So when the doctor informed him, you didn't overdose on anything. These pills contain no actual medication, almost instantly, within three minutes, his blood pressure returned to normal, his heart rates stabilized, his symptoms disappeared, and he recovered very quickly. So why does this matter? Well, this is the no cebo effect
in its purest form. So a belief caused the physiological crisis. So the problem the very real. Now, remember the medical emergency was real, right, the belief was flawed, His thought was flawed. But your body can't tell the difference between what is real and what you think is real, So your body doesn't respond to what is real. Your body
responds to what you think is real. Because what was real was he had taken twenty nine harmless pills, which normally would do absolutely nothing to a body, maybe give you a gut ache because you've just taken twenty nine starch pills. Who knows, But what it actually did as a consequence of his thinking about what he'd done, it put him into a death spiral, like a severe medical crisis. So a belief caused the physiological drama. And guess what
a belief A belief reversal ended it. There was no chemical explanation interpreted, I'm in danger, I've poisoned myself, and it triggered an adrenaline shock response, vascular collapse, sympathetic nervous system upheaval, and then the brain. Then the moment that the brain learned there was no danger. Oh, that story I told myself is bullshit. It isn't real. I haven't taken a shitload of drugs. The moment that he realized that that there was no danger, the body reversed the
entire process instantly. And that's from a paper called no Cebo Effects with Placebo Treatment and Clinical Trials, and the authors.
Of that were Reeves.
And Ladner in two thousand and three. I love that one so interesting. So, I mean, what's the key message. Well, if the mind can cause a problem, the mind can help solve the problem. That's that's part of it. Because your brain isn't reacting to reality. Your brain is reacting to what you think is real. Your brain is reacting to what you think or it thinks reality is alrighty, this is my last one. This is my favorite one because I'm a dude, and I've been lifting weights forever.
I'm an exercise scientist, and I'm into all this shit that I'm about to share with you. But whether or not you're dude, and whether or not you're lifted weights or never lifted weights, I think you'll find this interesting because it's not so much about strength training as it is about the incredible things that can happen with belief.
So this story is called the Steroids that Weren't So back in the.
Early nineteen seventies, there was a guy called research called Dr Robert Ariol and he was studying strength training performance in college athletes. Time this is pre like this is pre all the drug cheating, like the more common era stuff. But at the time, anabolic steroids were starting to become popular in competitive sport. I remember a time when they
weren't even illegal. Can you believe that anyway? And there was a growing belief that steroids were depending on what you're trying to get, you know, strength, power, speed, they were almost magical and if you took them that your strength and your power and your speed and your performance and your body in general would go through the roof, like all of this amazing shit would happen. So doctor Ariel designed a study to test something slightly different. So
the question was not do steroids work? That wasn't the question, but the question was what happens when someone believes they're taking steroids?
I love that.
So he recruited a group of male varsity weightlifters. So, by the way, when they believe they're taking steroids, but they're not, of course. So anyway, he recruited a bunch of blokesome weightlifters, university weightlifters, strong dudes, already training quite a background, already been lifting for quite a long time, already quite elite. So we're not talking about novices or
beginners or even intermediates. We're talking about people who are reasonably down the road in terms of their own training journey and their own competitive journey. So strong, committed, high performing, motivated dudes, the kind of blokes who were obsessed with their numbers, with you know, what they lifted, what they squaded, what they benched, what they cleaned, all of those things, so all of their numbers. And for the first seven weeks,
the athletes trained, So it happened in two parts. Happened in a seven week block, then a four week block. So for the first four weeks the athletes trained normally, they trained hard, they trained consistently, nothing changed. But they're all in the gym busting their ass, trying to eat well, sleep well, lift well, recover well, do all the things that elite athletes want to do. And their gains were obviously because they've been training for quite a long time.
So over the seven weeks of being monitored, there were minor changes, but nothing traumatic, which is to be expected because they've already got years of training under their belt and now we're just monitoring and observing and tracking a seven week period with no real change in.
The protocol or the variables. And then so then came a twist.
The doctor told about half of the group at the seven week mark that they were about to go on a cycle of a really powerful steroid called dianabol, which is an oral steroid, so in other words, it's taken as a tablet. So they were told half the group were told they were about to begin a cycle of an anambolic steroid. Now, remember, all of these guys understand what steroids is, they are are They all believe that these are these essentially these magic pills and so on.
So but of course, you know, I'm going to tell you in reality, they were given place ebos completely inert, no active ingredient, just filler.
So all of the athletes in this group believed that they were now on the gear.
I'm going to give you the specifics in a moment, but I'll just start by telling you, so seven weeks remember a kind of minimal change. But over the four weeks where they were nudge nudge wink wink in inverted commas on the gear, the athletes who believed they were taking steroids saw crazy strength gains, heavy lifts, more explosive training intensity, better confidence, more aggressive, better recovery, less hesitation
under the bar. And so while nothing changed in their physiology from a chemical from including chemicals or drugs, there were no hormones added, nothing. There were no anabolic pathways that were artificially boosted, so no actual chemical enhancement is the clumsy thing that I'm trying to get out of my mouth. But the only thing that really changed was
their belief. They expected to get stronger, so they trained like men who were getting stronger, So they pushed harder, They recovered with more purpose, They approached the bar with more confidence and certainty, and the body followed the mind.
So when the.
Athletes finally were told that the pills had been taking were placebos, they didn't even know that that was an option. They unequivocally absolutely thought they were on steroids. They were shocked and some didn't believe it. Some felt embarrassed, and some were amazed. Now let me just go to I've just got to find it because I've got this written here. So the actual bart here we go, all right, So vastly level male athletes during all right, So here are
the actual strength improvements. For those of you who train, this will blow your head off. For those of you who don't, just trust me. He says, that sounds dodgy, doesn't it. So bench press one RM, which is one rep max. So in other words, how much they could bench press for one repetition absolute maximum effort. So over the seven weeks, the first seven weeks where they were in inverted Comma's no chemical assistance, the average gain was
four point three five kilograms. Four point three five kilograms across the totality of all of the athletes. Now in seven weeks, considering they already have a big background, four point three five kilos is modest. It's not nothing, it's something. And they'd all improved over seven weeks. So that's good. But what we saw over the subsequent four weeks, so remember seven weeks four point three five kilo game, and then the subsequent four weeks where they are on steroids.
Nudge nudge, wink wink, we saw a thirteen point five kilogram increase, so just over half the time, still with no drugs, but they think they've got drugs, and we saw three times the level of improvement. Then we go to squatting a one rep back squad where you've got the bar sitting on your shoulders, on your traps behind
your head. So in the first seven weeks the average improvement without drugs six point eight kilo gain in strength or in terms of best lift best one RM score for a squad six point eight kilo improvement in seven weeks, and then in the subsequent four weeks when they thought they were on steroids but weren't, the improvement was eighteen to twenty two kilograms on average compared to over seven
weeks six point eight. Now in four weeks we've got somewhere around three to three and a half times the improvement in about half the time without drugs, just but believing they had drugs. Deadlift there was first first seven weeks seven kilo gain, subsequent four weeks over twenty kilo gain. Military press, which is pressing basic from your shoulders straight up in the air like a vertical press with a weight.
In the first seven weeks there was pretty much no change, so minimal kind of somewhere less than half a kilogram change, and during the four week placebo phase of the trial, the average was five to seven versus zero. So the bottom line is that they really got stronger. They really got stronger. There. It wasn't just psychology. It was a physiological change, and it was psychology driving physiology. So when they believed they were taking steroids, their body performed as
though they were. Their strength gains tripled on average without a single molecule of testosterone or any other steroid entering their system. So that's the deal. Well, that's the deal kids. A thought is not just a thought. A belief is not just a belief. Your mind is not just sitting in your skull watching your life go by. It's running
the show. It's influencing your chemistry. It's affecting your recovery, your strength, your pain, your immune system, your immune function, your energy, your stress responses, and your overall state and your overall experience of life and your ability to heal and recover. We saw a guy recover from knee pain and return to sport because he believed his need been repaired. We saw Parkinson symptoms improve because the brain believed medication
had been given. We saw hotel workers lose weight and improve cardiovascular health just because they understood their work differently. And we saw athletes get considerably stronger because they will believe they were on a drug that they weren't actually on. And none of those changes came from magic or hype or superstition. They came from the expectation of change. They came from the thinking. They came from meaning, from interpretation, from what the brain decided was true, what the brain
thought was true. The brain was responding to what it thought was real, not was not what was actually happening in the real world.
So the question.
Becomes, what are you telling your brain? What story are you running, What assumptions are you reinforcing, What expectations are you living inside? What's the internal language that's shaping your body, behavior and experiences. Because the consequences of your thoughts are not just philosophical, in fact, not at all, they're physiological. They show up in blood chemistry, in muscle activation and inflammation, in digestion, in movement, in mobility, and heart rate, in mood,
in recovery, in performance. And it's not just like here's the thing. This is not positive thinking. This is not be all you can be, you know, unicorns and puppies.
This is about accurate.
Thinking, helpful thinking, constructive narratives, and self awareness. So the takeaway for this episode is it's kind of simple, like, your thoughts are not everything, but.
They're not nothing. They matter a lot, So learn to
Notice them, question them, Choose the ones that move you forward, interrupt the ones that hold you back, that fuck you up, that cost you because your mind is not a passenger in your life, it's the driver.