Mmm milkshakes ...
“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” –Lao Tzu
When you utter the phrase “mind-body connection,” a collective sigh is heaved by the conference of no-nonsense, “give me the empirical data” skeptics. I think a certain level of skepticism is healthy—it means your mind is not idle and you are actively questioning and analyzing the information you absorb. However, if you think “mind-body connection” sounds overly spiritual and New-Agey for your liking, rest assured that I mean it quite literally.
Your beliefs manifest themselves in your body. (I know what you might be thinking, but stay with me.)
First, let's consider the placebo effect. It has been a well-known occurrence for many decades— a patient (in either a clinical setting or a double-blind study) is given an ineffective treatment, such as an inert tablet, and sees measurable physical improvement. For example, in a 2002 UCLA study of experimental antidepressants, patients in the control group— who’d been given a placebo and reported feeling an improvement— showed a greater increase in brain activity than those who’d responded well to the active drugs. The activity occurred in a different region of the brain, proving that the brain responded differently to the placebo, but with a similar positive outcome (1).
These same results have been repeatedly seen with placebos, especially those given in place of painkillers. Studies have shown the pain-relieving centers of the brain become active and release endorphins when a patient expects to be freed from his or her pain by some treatment, thus making the placebo effective. In a similar vein, many doctors have admitted to prescribing antibiotics even when they suspect an illness is viral, because they believe in the power of the placebo effect. (Side note: this is incredibly controversial, and for good reason, but my point is that the efficacy of placebos has been seen time and time again.)
Why then is it considered far-fetched to believe that the mind is as integral to the rest of the body as the muscular system is to cardiovascular system is to the respiratory system? The brain is, after all, part of the body, and is constantly “interpreting” sensory stimuli from the world around us, storing memories, and learning—it is the hub of our thoughts, which we actively engage with.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.” -- John Milton
If we can wrap our minds around the placebo effect, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that our beliefs about the foods we consume can affect how we digest them.
Alia Crum, a clinical psychologist, spent years researching the placebo effect, and wondered if nutritional labels could be affecting us in a similar way. To test this, she set up a milkshake study, which was recently featured in NPR’s report Mind Over Milkshake, which you can listen to here.
To summarize: french vanilla milkshakes, each 300 calories, were separated into two batches. One batch, which she labeled Indulgence, had a label listing loads of sugar and fat, adding up to 620 calories. The other batch, labeled Sensishake, was advertised as having zero percent fat, no added sugar, and only 140 calories. In reality, they were the exact same.
NPR's Alix Spiegel reports, “Both before and after the people in the study drank their shakes, nurses measured their levels of a hormone called ghrelin.” Ghrelin, aka the hunger hormone, is secreted in the gut. When its levels drop, it signals to the body that it’s had enough food, and it starts to kick the metabolism into gear to digest the calories that have been taken in.
The study found that those who had consumed the shake that they perceived to be indulgent saw a greater decrease in ghrelin—on average 3 times as much as those who drank the “sensible” shake. How could this be if both of the shakes were nutritionally exactly the same? What was the one variable that differed? The milkshake drinker's beliefs about what they were eating.
Does this trend extend beyond just the food we consume? Do our beliefs about everything affect how our bodies process different stimuli? How about stress?
“Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts.” -- John Harricharan
In June of 2013, Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal gave a TEDtalk entitled “How to make stress your friend.” She was forced to reconsider what she had been telling people about the harmful outcomes of too much stress, when a study’s findings suggested that our beliefs play an important role in these outcomes:
When you utter the phrase “mind-body connection,” a collective sigh is heaved by the conference of no-nonsense, “give me the empirical data” skeptics. I think a certain level of skepticism is healthy—it means your mind is not idle and you are actively questioning and analyzing the information you absorb. However, if you think “mind-body connection” sounds overly spiritual and New-Agey for your liking, rest assured that I mean it quite literally.
Your beliefs manifest themselves in your body. (I know what you might be thinking, but stay with me.)
First, let's consider the placebo effect. It has been a well-known occurrence for many decades— a patient (in either a clinical setting or a double-blind study) is given an ineffective treatment, such as an inert tablet, and sees measurable physical improvement. For example, in a 2002 UCLA study of experimental antidepressants, patients in the control group— who’d been given a placebo and reported feeling an improvement— showed a greater increase in brain activity than those who’d responded well to the active drugs. The activity occurred in a different region of the brain, proving that the brain responded differently to the placebo, but with a similar positive outcome (1).
These same results have been repeatedly seen with placebos, especially those given in place of painkillers. Studies have shown the pain-relieving centers of the brain become active and release endorphins when a patient expects to be freed from his or her pain by some treatment, thus making the placebo effective. In a similar vein, many doctors have admitted to prescribing antibiotics even when they suspect an illness is viral, because they believe in the power of the placebo effect. (Side note: this is incredibly controversial, and for good reason, but my point is that the efficacy of placebos has been seen time and time again.)
Why then is it considered far-fetched to believe that the mind is as integral to the rest of the body as the muscular system is to cardiovascular system is to the respiratory system? The brain is, after all, part of the body, and is constantly “interpreting” sensory stimuli from the world around us, storing memories, and learning—it is the hub of our thoughts, which we actively engage with.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, and a hell of Heaven.” -- John Milton
If we can wrap our minds around the placebo effect, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that our beliefs about the foods we consume can affect how we digest them.
Alia Crum, a clinical psychologist, spent years researching the placebo effect, and wondered if nutritional labels could be affecting us in a similar way. To test this, she set up a milkshake study, which was recently featured in NPR’s report Mind Over Milkshake, which you can listen to here.
To summarize: french vanilla milkshakes, each 300 calories, were separated into two batches. One batch, which she labeled Indulgence, had a label listing loads of sugar and fat, adding up to 620 calories. The other batch, labeled Sensishake, was advertised as having zero percent fat, no added sugar, and only 140 calories. In reality, they were the exact same.
NPR's Alix Spiegel reports, “Both before and after the people in the study drank their shakes, nurses measured their levels of a hormone called ghrelin.” Ghrelin, aka the hunger hormone, is secreted in the gut. When its levels drop, it signals to the body that it’s had enough food, and it starts to kick the metabolism into gear to digest the calories that have been taken in.
The study found that those who had consumed the shake that they perceived to be indulgent saw a greater decrease in ghrelin—on average 3 times as much as those who drank the “sensible” shake. How could this be if both of the shakes were nutritionally exactly the same? What was the one variable that differed? The milkshake drinker's beliefs about what they were eating.
Does this trend extend beyond just the food we consume? Do our beliefs about everything affect how our bodies process different stimuli? How about stress?
“Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts.” -- John Harricharan
In June of 2013, Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal gave a TEDtalk entitled “How to make stress your friend.” She was forced to reconsider what she had been telling people about the harmful outcomes of too much stress, when a study’s findings suggested that our beliefs play an important role in these outcomes:
People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying. But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress.
Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you. That is over 20,000 deaths a year.
Watch the full TEDtalk here:
I think this is quite an empowering speech. Everyone has some stress in life-- financial worry, relationship stress, your run-of-the-mill existential crises ... There will always be things that pop up which you have no control over. However, this study suggests that if you change your perception, if you learn to repeatedly think of stress as a challenge that is going to make you better and face it with optimism, you are theoretically better off than the person who experiences very little stress. That is pretty amazing.
These findings open up many fascinating lines of inquiry. Can resilience to stressful events and positive psychology actually help keep you healthy? Can negative thoughts and emotions make you sick?
The field of epigenetics, the study of "heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence," has been exploring some of these questions.
The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital in Boston is making some serious headway (ha, puns) in studying the psychological factors of many physiological diseases, and how genetic expression can be positively changed by eliciting the relaxation response.
Read more: Study Identifies Genes, Pathways Altered During Relaxation Response Practice
I am excited that these questions are finally being treated seriously by respected medical experts, and will hopefully soon be considered mainstream rather than "alternative" medicine, but that is a topic for another day.
Until then, I hope this has made you less of a skeptic about the connection of your mind and body, and I hope you will keep this information in mind when faced with stress this week, or milkshakes. Use this information as fuel for your own empowerment.
Be well,
Lauren
These findings open up many fascinating lines of inquiry. Can resilience to stressful events and positive psychology actually help keep you healthy? Can negative thoughts and emotions make you sick?
The field of epigenetics, the study of "heritable changes in gene activity that are not caused by changes in the DNA sequence," has been exploring some of these questions.
The Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Mass General Hospital in Boston is making some serious headway (ha, puns) in studying the psychological factors of many physiological diseases, and how genetic expression can be positively changed by eliciting the relaxation response.
Read more: Study Identifies Genes, Pathways Altered During Relaxation Response Practice
I am excited that these questions are finally being treated seriously by respected medical experts, and will hopefully soon be considered mainstream rather than "alternative" medicine, but that is a topic for another day.
Until then, I hope this has made you less of a skeptic about the connection of your mind and body, and I hope you will keep this information in mind when faced with stress this week, or milkshakes. Use this information as fuel for your own empowerment.
Be well,
Lauren
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