North Star Writers Group

That pesky placebo effect has reared its ugly head again. It’s the perennial stepchild of medical science researchers, who don’t quite know what to make of something that just doesn’t jibe with the scientific method and the objective worldview.

This latest placebo episode was reported in the February issue Psychological Science. Harvard researchers found that hotel cleaners, told that cleaning 15 rooms a day is enough exercise to maintain a healthy lifestyle, were more trim and fit after four weeks than those cleaners who didn’t hear the same message. The researchers checked, and the members of the informed group had not made any changes to their diets or activity levels, yet they had lost an average of two pounds, lowered their blood pressure by 10 percent and showed significant reductions in body fat percentage, body mass index and waist sizes compared with the uninformed cleaners.

Apparently, the fitness message alone was enough to impact the cleaners’ physical condition in a positive manner.

The placebo effect is far more significant than many of us realize. It’s much more profound than just a sugar pill having the same curing effect as an antibiotic, or, as in the experiment noted previously, a statement becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. That latter phrase, along with the description “wishful thinking,” has often been used to trivialize or discount the placebo effect, which theoretically should not occur. In an objective universe, sugar pills cannot rid the body of infection and statements cannot affect physical health - and yet somehow, they do.

Although we have been reluctant to admit it, the placebo effect reveals to us the power of our own beliefs, our thoughts and our feelings. This latest experiment also shows how our personal power is impacted and limited by our faith in and deference to “experts.” The hotel cleaners regarded the Harvard scientists as experts, and so took as gospel the statements the researchers made about the cleaners’ workload being healthy. The cleaners’ faith was then reflected in the improved conditions of their physical bodies.

These results beg the question: Might the opposite also be true? Could the endless media barrage of stern warnings and daily lectures about the dangers of inactivity and “bad” food affect our fitness in a negative way? Could well-meaning experts who ignore or discount the placebo effect inadvertently be aggravating the very health problems they claim to want to reduce or prevent?

Our concept of go-to expertise has changed over the centuries. Religious experts of one kind or another used to dictate government policies and laws. Ever since the so-called age of enlightenment, we look more to scientific experts to explain our universe, our world and human nature to us.

The type of expert we follow isn’t really the issue here. The issue ultimately is about personal power and responsibility. Whenever we put more faith in the experts’ opinions than in our own, we abdicate our responsibility for self and thus give up some of our personal power to those experts, too often with negative consequences for ourselves - and for the experts.

As just one example, consider the sugar substitute aspartame, sold under the trade names Nutrasweet and Equal. After it became available in the United States in 1982, I tried it in place of saccharine. I quickly stopped using it, however, because of unpleasant side effects that included an itchy red spot in one of my palms, severe headaches and the jitters. Despite the FDA’s continual pronouncements that aspartame was and remains safe, I refused to substitute the experts’ opinion for my own common sense. My unpleasant side effects rapidly disappeared once I stopped ingesting aspartame.

Experts, after all, are still only human, invariably fallible and not always wise or loving. It’s in our best interests to take back our power by regarding experts not as paragons never to be questioned, but as consultants with specialized and useful knowledge for us to evaluate and act on, provided we see fit to do so.

To offer feedback on this column, click here.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column #CT24. Request permission to publish here.