THIS IS GOOD FOR YOU
In 1955, prominent American anesthesiologist Henry Knowles Beecher published a pioneering paper titled, “The Powerful Placebo.” As a field doctor during World War II, Beecher had witnessed for himself the power of the human mind. He found that saline injections, which contained no actual medicine or therapeutic value, often relieved injured soldiers’ pain when morphine was unavailable. The treatment wasn’t actually helping them. The soldiers responded positively simply because they thought it was helping them. A placebo is a fake medicine that initiates a real, positive response - not because it’s actually good for the person taking it, but just because he or she believes it is.
Scientists and researchers have been using placebos ever since Beecher introduced the idea. It’s one way to determine if a new treatment is genuinely effective, or if patient improvement is simply the byproduct of their expectation and belief. Placebos also serve as evidence of the incredible power of the human mind. When we simply believe that what we’re receiving is good for us, our brain and our body react accordingly.
Back in 2014, researchers from Colorado College wanted to see if this concept applied to our experiences beyond just medicine, so they conducted a study focused on a topic we can all relate to. It was titled, “Placebo Sleep Affects Cognitive Functioning.” In the experiment, 164 participants reported the quality of their sleep from the night before, and then were placed randomly into one of two groups. Regardless of how well they actually slept, researchers told the members of group one that they had spent an abnormally high percentage of their night in deep sleep - that they slept soundly - while those in group two were told they had spent only a small percentage there, and thus slept poorly. Both groups were then administered a cognitive exam.
What did the results show? As you might expect, the scores were determined not by how the participants actually slept the night before, but instead by how they believed they slept based on the researchers' fake information. Those who were told they spent more time in deep sleep scored significantly higher than those who were told they didn’t. Just another example of the placebo effect at work.
The Colorado College researchers used the sleep study experiment to highlight that the placebo effect, as they put it, “can extend beyond its typical use in pharmaceutical drugs to involve aspects of daily life.” Their work points to the fact that for people in the real world - people like you and me here today - what we experience isn’t as important as what we think we experience. Our minds have the powerful ability to positively impact both our psychological and our physiological response, when we simply believe that what’s happening is good for us.
I got to thinking this week about how that concept applies to the experiences that are a part of my daily life - and yours, too. It’s more than a concept, actually. It’s science. It’s proven. If we want to put ourselves in the most productive position possible, then sometimes we need to provide our own placebo. If we believe that what we're getting here today is good for us, then it is. Our job is to figure out how.
That challenge or setback we weren’t anticipating has the potential to cripple our performance, of course. But what if we believe that meeting challenges and overcoming setbacks are a required part of any meaningful achievement? If that’s what we believe, then their existence today serves as evidence that we're on the right track.
Maybe we recognize that today is gonna be another day of working and waiting to get what it is that we want. It’s easy to justify taking today off, but what if we believe that the small and seemingly insignificant things on our to-do list today are enough to push our project past the tipping point? If that’s what we believe, then our patience and our persistence today matters.
Or maybe there’s a difficult but important conversation we're feeling the temptation to avoid. That’s understandable, of course, but what if we believe that this tough talk will lead to resolving the issue, restoring that relationship, and helping us move forward stronger than we’ve been before? If that’s what we believe, then that becomes a conversation we can’t not have.
Are any of those benefits actually true? On one hand, who knows? Maybe in reality, those challenges can’t be met. Maybe that tipping point is still a long ways off, and maybe that relationship can’t be restored. But on the other hand, who cares? The placebo effect validates that what we believe to be true is in many ways more important than what may actually be true. If we have the power to think for ourselves, then each of us should be working to provide our own placebo. We should be building the belief that what we’re receiving here today is good for us, and then start working to figure out how.
