MESSAGE #735 THE NOCEBO EFFECT…

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, either way you’re right.”
-HENRY FORD

We all know about the placebo effect – when a treatment or medication with no therapeutic value (i.e., a sugar pill) is administered to a person and their symptoms improve. This person believes and expects the medicine will work, therefore it does. Placebo comes from the Latin “I shall please.”

The opposite is something called the nocebo effect, which is Latin for “I will cause pain.”

“In one study, a group of students was told that a mild electric current would be sent through their brains, and that it might cause a headache in some of them. They were fitted with electrodes, but no electricity was applied. Even so, 70 percent of them suffered headaches.”
-From “Meditation as Medicine” by Khalsa and Stauth

So as stated in my book, “Game. Set. Life. – Peak Performance for Sports and Life,” sports and life are a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you believe is oftentimes what comes true.

What are your beliefs?


Thanks for reading.