Placebos and PSAs
Sep. 26th, 2012 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupI found a very good book on stretching. I started using it on Sunday- and really, "using" is an exaggeration, I've only done a handful of the stretches two or three reps per day, and read the introductory chapter where he explains some of his philosophy and how he discovered it- and by today I was noticeably more relaxed. At least, I think that's what this is. I don't know if I've ever had a muscle be relaxed without the aid of exhaustion, alcohol, or endorphins. I will be talking more about this book, but I'd like to maybe finish it and apply in consistently first, so it will wait. Today's news is that I started taking magnesium again. I've used magnesium before and it helped my flexibility and flexibility-related health problems tremendously. I've been meaning to start taking it again for weeks or possibly even months. I have some sitting on my desk at work. And yet, I never got around to taking it until the problem was already being solved.
There's a well known study in which a group of pink collar workers were given identical information about the health benefits of exercise. The treatment was then given additional information about how and why their jobs (hotel cleaners) counted as exercise. Both groups were tracked on various health and weight related measurements at the start of the study and again 30 days later. Despite neither group receiving any differences in intervention, nor reporting any changes in routine, the treatment group was noticeably improved. Not hugely, and any one number could be dismissed as statistically but not medically significant, except there was no statistically significant change in the control group, and every single measurement improved in the treatment group. Weight, BF%, waist to hip ratio, systolic and dystolic blood pressure. I think using weight to track health is iffy, which is why it's good that the most significant improvements were in systolic blood pressure. A 10 point drop over 30 days is not trivial.
The authors call this the placebo effect. This bugs me because it implies telling the maids they were exercising was a lie, when it was in fact true, and truer than the traditional definition exercise, which is formed around people who have money and sit all day. On the other hand, it's perfectly in line with my definition of the placebo effect, which is basically "human brains are powerful and respond to expectations in ways we don't fully understand". This study was only a month long. It would be very interesting to know if the effects were cumulative over time; even if peace of mind is only good for one 10 point drop in BP, that may allow you to exercise a little bit more, which will build muscle that protects your joints, which lets you work a few more years in less pain...
If it's true that emphasizing the good that people are already doing leads to measurably better indicators, what does shaming them do? It's entirely possible that the ,anti-fat PSAs are ineffective not just because shame never motivates anyone for more than 10 minutes, but because they induce stress that hurts people's health. They may, literally, be killing people. Children. If the fact that these were giving ammo to the already well stocked childhood emotional torture brigade was not enough, the evidence indicates that these campaigns are failing at the only thing they're supposed to achieve. And they're doing it with government money. This has to stop.
There's a well known study in which a group of pink collar workers were given identical information about the health benefits of exercise. The treatment was then given additional information about how and why their jobs (hotel cleaners) counted as exercise. Both groups were tracked on various health and weight related measurements at the start of the study and again 30 days later. Despite neither group receiving any differences in intervention, nor reporting any changes in routine, the treatment group was noticeably improved. Not hugely, and any one number could be dismissed as statistically but not medically significant, except there was no statistically significant change in the control group, and every single measurement improved in the treatment group. Weight, BF%, waist to hip ratio, systolic and dystolic blood pressure. I think using weight to track health is iffy, which is why it's good that the most significant improvements were in systolic blood pressure. A 10 point drop over 30 days is not trivial.
The authors call this the placebo effect. This bugs me because it implies telling the maids they were exercising was a lie, when it was in fact true, and truer than the traditional definition exercise, which is formed around people who have money and sit all day. On the other hand, it's perfectly in line with my definition of the placebo effect, which is basically "human brains are powerful and respond to expectations in ways we don't fully understand". This study was only a month long. It would be very interesting to know if the effects were cumulative over time; even if peace of mind is only good for one 10 point drop in BP, that may allow you to exercise a little bit more, which will build muscle that protects your joints, which lets you work a few more years in less pain...
If it's true that emphasizing the good that people are already doing leads to measurably better indicators, what does shaming them do? It's entirely possible that the ,anti-fat PSAs are ineffective not just because shame never motivates anyone for more than 10 minutes, but because they induce stress that hurts people's health. They may, literally, be killing people. Children. If the fact that these were giving ammo to the already well stocked childhood emotional torture brigade was not enough, the evidence indicates that these campaigns are failing at the only thing they're supposed to achieve. And they're doing it with government money. This has to stop.
