Harness Your Mind's Power: The Placebo Effect and Self-Healing

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host Rob dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you didn't hear, this podcast is going from three times a week to four times a week. So now a brand new episode is going to come out every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. So listen to us whenever you feel that you need an extra boost and to understand yourself just a little bit more. Today, we're going to be talking about the amazing power of your mind. This is the Mindset Mentor podcast. People call me the mindset mentor.

0:41Obviously, you know, I am obsessed with understanding the thing that is in between your ears. I want to know how I work. I want to know my faults. I want to know the traps of my mind. But we're going to talk about how amazingly incredible your mind is today and how if you can wrangle your mind to do what you want it to do, you can absolutely create the life that you want and everything that you want in your life. And we're going to talk about something that I think is one of the most incredible things that humans rarely ever talk about. It's called the placebo effect. You've probably heard of the placebo effect before, but do you really understand the incredible studies that have been done with the placebo effect?

1:21Placebo effect basically means that a doctor comes in and tells somebody, hey, this pill is going to heal you. And that pill that they give them is nothing. It's just a sugar pill. And they believe that it's going to heal them and it heals them. why do we not have our mind blown by this every single day because it's estimated that up to 32 percent of all medical healings come from the placebo effect which means that people simply believe that they are healed and they end up healing themselves we're given the most complex piece of machinery between our two ears but we have no manual of how to use it and that's what I want to try to help you do is help you learn how to heal yourself and how to create the reality that you want to based off your mind.

2:10And so there's a couple of studies I want to talk to you about to actually show you the science behind this. Ali Crum, who is a professional psychology at Stanford, she's the director of the MindBodyLab. She created these milkshakes, right? They were just normal milkshakes, and they measured the physiological response to somebody's body based off of these milkshakes, based off of what they told them about it. So they said to them, hey, this milkshake is a high fat, high calorie shake. And they gave it to them. And then they gave them the exact same shake. And they said this right here, weeks later, is a sensible low calorie shake.

2:49And they had one week with one and then one week with another one. And what's crazy about it is when they told the people that it was a high fat, high calorie shake, their body reacted as if there was a lot of fat and a lot of calories that came in. When they told them it was a sensible low calorie shake, their body that created less ghrelin and ghrelin is the chemical that creates the feeling of hunger. Their body created three times less ghrelin when they thought they were given a sensible shake, which means that they thought they were given a sensible shake and they just happened to be less hungry because of it.

3:24basically their bodies responded as if they had consumed less food when they were given the the quote-unquote low calorie shake and when they were given the quote-unquote high calorie high fat shake their bodies responded as if they had consumed more food but they were given the exact same shake week one and week two which means that their bodies responded to what they thought about the shake. Pretty crazy, right? Let's give you a couple more. There was a group of hotel housekeepers and they went to these hotel housekeepers and they realized that these people who are hotel housekeepers, they're kind of working out a lot.

4:05When you look at the surgeon general, they say that you should have a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate exercise. But when you look at these women who were hotel housekeepers, they found out that they were getting a lot more than the surgeon general recommended. And so three out of 10 of these women actually thought that they work out and take care of themselves. They told half of them that their work was incredible for their bodies and that they were consuming and not consuming, they were burning more calories at their job than the average person does every single day. And those women and men, excuse me, so the housekeepers, men and women, they told them that, hey, you're actually going to be losing weight by having this job and by working this job.

4:49And then half of them, they didn't tell them anything. The half that they said, hey, you're actually burning more calories than the average person. The ones that thought they were burning more calories ended up losing weight and they decreased their blood pressure by on average 10 points because they simply believed that their work was good for their bodies. They felt better about their bodies and they felt better about their work. they didn't report any differences in their diet or their workout routine though pretty crazy isn't it let's give you a couple more there's a thing that was called the sham surgery trials in one study patients with osteoarthritis of the knee were either given a real surgery on their knee or a sham surgery which means that they made an incision in their knee but they didn't they didn't actually do anything to their knee except for put a line in their skin.

5:42So no actual surgical procedure was performed. Many of those people who received the sham surgery reported improvements in pain and functional, which was comparable to the people who actually underwent the real surgery. So they saw a line in their leg and went, huh, I've gotten the surgery. They must have fixed my knee. And when they think their knee is fixed, guess what's crazy? The knee actually started to fix itself. okay the last study i'm going to tell you about about this as well was around ibs irritable bowel syndrome so there was a study that was conducted by uh medical uh the harvard medical school and they involved these patients with ibs some of them were given no treatment while others were given the placebo pills and the doctors were openly telling them that they were sugar pills and there were no active ingredient so they some of them were like hey we're giving you the placebo effect.

6:38We're giving you a sugar pill. We're just going to see what happens. Some of them were given this pill and said, Hey, listen, this pill is going to help you out with your IBS. The group that took the placebo and thought to themselves, this is actually going to help my IBS reported twice the rate of symptom relief compared to the other treatment, the quote unquote, no treatment group, which means that these people thought that this pill was going to help their IBS. And guess what? They reported twice the rate of symptom relief compared to the other group, which shows you study after study, after study, after study, when you think that you are healed, you can actually heal yourself, which shows you the power of your mind.

7:19And it shows you the power of the mind body connection. Now, then you got to start to ask yourself, if somebody believes that they are healed and they heal themselves, could it also work the exact opposite way where someone thinks they're sick and because they think they're sick, they make themselves more sick? And the answer is yes, that's called the nocebo effect. When people are told about the negative side effects, they're more likely to experience those negative side effects. People who thought they had a fever had a three degree jump in their body temperature when they were told by doctors that they had a fever, even though they didn't.

7:58So a doctor said, hey, you have a fever and their body temperature actually went up three degrees. So when sometimes people think they're getting sick, it can actually create that physiological symptoms inside of your body. There's been studies on headaches, exactly the same, where there were experiments that they did where participants were warned that they might have headaches as a result to high Wi-Fi and mobile signals in the area, which were not true. But they said, hey, you know, in this room, there's a lot of Wi-Fi. There's a lot of phone signals. You might just get a headache. The participants who were told that were more likely to report that they had headaches than the people who weren't given those warnings.

8:40They thought they would get a headache. Guess what? They got a headache. Damn, this is pretty crazy. Hey, Rob, are there any other studies on this? Absolutely. Let me tell you one more. One more study is withdrawal symptoms in quote unquote decaffeinated coffee drinkers. And so they took regular coffee drinkers. And most people know that when you stop drinking coffee, you're supposed to have withdrawal symptoms. So they took regular coffee drinkers and they were given their regular morning coffee, but were falsely told that they were drinking decaffeinated coffee. And a very large number of those people developed their own withdrawal symptoms, such as headaches, simply due to the expectation that they had decaffeinated, but the crazy part about it was they were given their regular morning coffee, which shows you can make yourself healthy.

9:30You can also make yourself sick. Now in this podcast, I'm not trying to say don't go to a medical doctor. I'm not trying to say anything bad about the health industry, any of that stuff. I'm just trying to make you understand that there's a really, really strong connection to what you think, to what your body actually does. And maybe, just maybe we're making ourselves sicker and maybe just maybe we're holding ourselves back based off of what we actually think about ourselves and there's more data on the placebo effect than any other drug that's ever been created in the world because the placebo effect is required in all drug studies people think they're healed and they're healed how fucking crazy is that What does this show you?

10:20It shows you that what you think actually changes everything in your life. It's not necessarily the circumstances of your life. It's not the circumstances of how you were raised, where you come from, what your body looks like, who you surround yourself. It's not just the circumstances about you. It's more about what you think of yourself. It's like the story, the parable of there's two different twins and they go up to one of the twins and they were raised with an alcoholic father and they go up to one of them who's an alcoholic later on in life. And they say, Hey, why are you an alcoholic? And the alcoholic one says, I'm an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic.

11:02And they go up to the other one who's a successful CEO and they say, Hey, why are you successful CEO? Why are you not an alcoholic at your father? And he says, I'm not an alcoholic because my father was an alcoholic. Those twins had the exact same life, the exact same upbringing, the exact same father. But what they thought about their father, what they thought about their circumstances, and what they thought about how they were raised changed what they actually do with their life. And I can relate to this because my mom's biggest fear in the world is that I'm going to be an alcoholic. Because my father was an alcoholic and passed away when I was 15 from liver failure from alcohol.

11:36So my mom's biggest fear is that I'm going to be an alcoholic. but I know with every single cell in my body, there's no universe that I could possibly live in where I am going to be an alcoholic. And I've made that decision. Now, I don't think just to just to tell you this, I don't think that you can go and eat crappy food all day long and eat fast food and McDonald's all day long and say, this McDonald's hamburger and French fries is making me thin. This big 1500 calorie milkshake is making me thin and it's just going to make you thin. I'm not saying that. But what I think is that if you tell yourself that you enjoy healthy food, if you tell yourself that you enjoy taking care of your body, then you will love the taste of that food more.

12:18You will love taking the action to create a healthy body a little bit more. You will be more inclined to go for that healthier food. If you're not a fan of going to the gym, tell yourself that you enjoy taking care of your body. It might be hard. Hell yeah, it's hard. Going to the gym is hard. but you enjoy what it's doing for yourself. You enjoy that it's going to allow you to live a longer, healthier life so that you can be around for your kids more, so that you can be around for your grandkids, so that you don't have a heart attack, so that you don't die early. Tell yourself how much you love and you enjoy taking care of your body.

12:50Remind yourself how every set that you put in the gym matters. Hey, yeah, this is hard, but I showed up for myself. And it really comes down to what you actually think. I remember one of our clients in my coaching group, at Mindset Mentor University, Amar, years ago, he was talking about how he was taking a flight with his four kids and his wife, and they were going to be going on a trip down to Puerto Rico. And he said, man, this flight is exact words or this flight is going to be a bitch. And I said, really? Do you think it's actually going to be a bitch? Because if you think it's going to be a bitch, it's going to be a bitch.

13:23And I said, you got to think differently. And he's like, okay, I'll tell myself that it's going to be great. It's going to be amazing. and the flight ended up being amazing. But if he had told himself over and over again, it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be hard, do you think that the flight might've been a little bit harder? Do you think he might've caused a little bit more restriction in his own mindset? Because we get what we're looking for. You're always gonna get what you're looking for in this world. If you're looking for all of the reasons why things are gonna be hard for you, you'll find all of the reasons why things are gonna be hard for you.

13:52If you look for all of the reasons why you're gonna follow this path and follow your passion and do something that you love, you'll find all of the reasons why it exists. Your brain is like cosmic Google. If you type something into Google, you will find that answer for whatever it is you're looking for. If you go into Google right now and you type, is coffee bad for your eyesight? You will find studies that say coffee is bad for your eyesight. If you Google coffee is good for your eyesight, you will find all of the proof that show coffee is actually good for your eyesight. Your brain is the exact same way.

14:24If you're constantly asking the questions, whatever questions you're asking and you're constantly looking for something, you will find what you're looking for. You have to realize that you will get what you're looking for in your life. The question is, what are you looking for? You have to realize the power of your belief. You have to change your belief. You have to change your words. You have to change everything that you speak into existence because your belief changes your words. Your words change your world and you speak your world into existence. So don't ever say something like, I can't do that.

14:52Say something like, I'm not able to do that yet, or I'm improving at that thing. Don't ever say I'm not good at math. Say I'm working at improving myself in math because ultimately the difference between those is just closing a door and shutting off any alternative realities that could exist versus leaving the door open to possibility or saying I'm not just going to leave it open to possibility. I'm going to create my future and what I want into existence. Your mind is so ridiculously powerful that you, whatever you think, whatever you say, you will speak into existence. And if you've been listening to this podcast long enough, you've heard me talk about the word abracadabra.

15:29I always thought that abracadabra up until about three years ago was just like the phrase that a magician said right before they took a rabbit out of a hat. But if you look at the actual word abracadabra, it is a Hebrew word that means as I speak, I create. As I speak words into reality, I create that reality. Now you got to ask yourself, what is a thought? A thought is just speaking in your own head, isn't it? So as you think, you also create. The question is, what are you speaking into reality? What are you thinking into reality? Because you're going to create that thing. Your mind is so ridiculously powerful.

16:04You have to understand that. You will create the reality that you are thinking about most in your life. You create your reality. And in order to succeed, you must first believe you can succeed. And not just like, hey, I believe I can succeed. but I'm going to get all 40, 50 trillion of my cells to believe that what I want is actually possible. There are incredible medical healings that have happened because of the placebo effect. There's also incredible things that people have done to themselves in a negative way because of the nocebo effect. And so what I really want you to get from this podcast episode is the power of your own mind.

16:39What are you thinking? What are you saying? And if those don't line up with the reality that you're trying to create in your life, you have to change them. And that's what it comes down to. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in at Rob Dial Jr. Once again, it is R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you have any episodes you want me to cover in the future, send me a DM on Instagram and say, Hey Rob, it'd be really cool if you could talk about this. I can't guarantee that I'm going to be able to talk about whatever it is that you send me a message about, but just maybe, and I've done it many times before, just maybe I'm going to get a message from somebody and say, Hey, that's a really great episode.

17:17I'm going to create an episode on that. I've done it many times before. So if you want to give me some suggestions, send me a DM. That's what I check the most in the way I communicate with followers. Once again, it's Rob Dial, Jr. R will be D I A L J R. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode, make it your mission, make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing, amazing day.