One Simple Trick to Double Your Gains - Real Science

In the 1970s, researchers saw something unexpected. They gave young men a pill they said was Dianabol, one of the most famous anabolic steroids at the time. The only problem, it wasn't Dianabol at all, it was a placebo. And yet, their strength gains over the next 4 weeks exploded. On the same training program, these lifters added far more to their bench press, overhead press, and squat than they had before, simply because they believed they were taking steroids. So what happened? In this video, I'm gonna break down the study, what did they find, how you can use this information in your own life, and I'm gonna look deeper into this strange phenomenon of the placebo effect, and why it still leaves a lot of scientists puzzled. By the end of this video, you'll be able to unplug yourself from the matrix, just like Neo. So what did the study find? It's as simple as it sounds. They told young athletes that they're gonna get D-ball, when in reality it was just a placebo pill, and these athletes got a lot stronger than without taking this placebo pill. First they trained for 4 weeks without the placebo, and then 4 weeks thinking they were getting 10 mg of Dianabol. During the first normal training for 4 weeks, their bench press increased by 4.5 kg, shoulder press by 0.7 kg, and squat by 2.7 kg. Then during the 4 weeks of placebo D-ball, their bench press increased by 13.3 kg, overhead press by 7.6 kg, and squat by 18.9 kg. That's a significant difference. Their bench press increased by 8.7 kg more, shoulder press by 6.9 kg, and squat by 16.3 kg compared to not thinking they're on steroids. No steroids were involved, it was all a placebo, and yet they were seeing 2-3 times higher strength gains than before getting the placebo pill. The simplest explanation is that they just trained harder. They thought they were getting steroids, so they thought they are stronger by default, because people think the steroids make you stronger, so just by thinking that they were getting steroids, they thought they were stronger, and therefore they trained harder to meet that expectation. You know that you have the capacity to be very strong because of this placebo steroid, and you have this expectation in your head that you want to meet. You want to hit this expectation in your head, and therefore you train much harder, you push yourself harder. That's the simplest explanation, and that's probably what happened. Before getting the D-ball placebo, their mind had set a limitation to how strong they think they are, and thus they didn't train that hard. With the D-ball however, they recruited more muscle fibers when thinking they're on gear, their brain sent stronger signals to the muscles, they pushed themselves harder and tolerated more discomfort, the same weight felt easier, so they lifted more, and they increased dopamine, which boosted their confidence and helped them to put more effort. We know this is the reason because if they were getting actual steroids, they would have been even stronger than that. But even then, these results are quite mind-boggling. 2-3 times higher strength gains just by pushing yourself harder, because they thought they were on steroids. But what is the placebo effect and how does it work? The placebo effect is when something helps you because you believe it will help you, even if there's no real active drug or ingredient in it. If you think you took something powerful, your brain can change the way you feel and perform. You might feel more confident, more motivated, less tired, and more willing to push harder. Basically, you take the placebo pill, your mind expects to get a boost, and you have this expectation in your head that you're trying to meet. So your brain does all this mental gymnastics to meet that expectation. In clinical trials, researchers often use a placebo so the participants don't know whether they're getting the real drug or a fake treatment. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, people are assigned by randomness, and neither the participants nor the researchers know who is getting what until the study is over. This helps to reduce bias and makes it easier to tell whether the drug worked because of the ingredient and not because of the placebo. In a 2011 analysis on placebo effects, scientists discovered that placebo effects can improve symptoms in pain, Parkinson's depression, anxiety, and addiction. They saw that patients with depression can experience almost the same level of relief from placebo as those treated with active medication. In Parkinson's disease, placebo treatments not only show subjective improvements, but also significant objective improvements in motor control. The effects are linked to the release of dopamine and is determined by an expectancy of improvement. In back pain studies, placebo effects can be large enough to meaningfully reduce pain. People getting a placebo treatment experience pain relief even though the treatment itself is fake. The reduction in pain severity is slightly lower as you can see from this graph. It's not a massive reduction, but it's still noticeable. A 2023 meta-analysis of 60 randomized controlled trials on patients with musculoskeletal neck pain saw that 38% of the pain reduction observed in patients treated with active interventions could be attributed to placebo or psychological effects. Just think about that. 38% of the benefits that you see from pain reducing interventions are because of believing that you're going to reduce your pain, not because of the active ingredient. That's almost half. MRI scans of people getting placebo treatments show that placebo treatments can turn down the brain's pain systems. In other words, believing that you're being helped can actually make the pain feel weaker. You're basically told you're getting something that will reduce your pain. Even if the treatment is fake, that expectation can lead your brain to turn down the pain signaling either before or during the painful experience because your brain is expecting to see a reduction in pain. Dopamine also plays a very critical role in this. In Parkinson's patients, people who have been told they have a 75% of receiving the placebo treatment for levodopa, which is a dopamine increasing drug, these people have the highest placebo-induced dopamine release. That's because dopamine is not a reward chemical, as people like to think. Dopamine is more of a neurotransmitter for salience and anticipation. You release the most dopamine when you're about to expect to get some reward. You don't release the highest dopamine when you're having sex or when you're eating chocolate. You release the most dopamine when you're about to have sex and about to eat chocolate. When you actually get it, the dopamine levels are much lower than during the anticipation. Dopamine helps to mediate the placebo effect by turning that expectation into a reward in of itself. When you believe a treatment will help you, your brain can treat that expectation like a promised reward. That activates the dopamine system, especially in the reward-related areas like the striatum. Dopamine then helps to increase motivation, salience, and readiness for benefit, which can contribute to real changes in symptoms or your performance. In Parkinson's disease, placebo treatment has been linked to endogenous dopamine release, which helps to explain why patients can temporarily improve even when the treatment is inactive. But the placebo effect doesn't work for everyone, obviously. If you have a migraine or some pain disorder, the doctors sometimes try to trick you by giving you a placebo treatment. They inject you with like salt water or give you like a pill. They say that it's going to reduce your pain, but if you don't experience any reduction in your pain within a few hours, then it was a placebo treatment. They don't always want to give you the actual ingredient because sometimes the placebo is enough to see a reduction in your pain. But some people don't experience that. Why doesn't the placebo effect work for some people? If you don't believe the treatment is going to work, then it's less likely to do so unless you're actually getting an active real treatment. Placebo works best for certain conditions like pain and subjective symptoms, but not for all conditions. People also have different brain chemistry. They're wired differently in terms of reward and dopamine. And you might also have past experience that influences your results. There's another critical idea we need to talk about, which is the opposite of the placebo effect. It's called the nocebo effect. Basically, you're told that this drug or this treatment has negative side effects. So you're expecting to get those negative side effects. For example, someone tells you that this food, this supplement, it has the side effects that it can cause stomach pain or make you nauseous. So when you take it, you start to notice, oh, I'm feeling my stomach is hurting or I'm feeling slightly more nauseous just because you're expecting to experience those side effects. If you weren't told about those side effects, then you might not have noticed them. But because now you're aware of the potential side effects, you're going to notice them and you're going to connect those side effects to the treatment. This is well documented in scientific research as shown by this review of 73 clinical trials on migraine patients. When patients are told about possible side effects, even those in the placebo groups often report symptoms that match the side effects of the drug being tested. And this doesn't apply only to pharmaceuticals. In an experiment, healthy volunteers received identical heat pain stimuli. One condition was told that it's going to reduce pain and the other was told that it's going to increase pain. Even though the actual pain stimulus was the same, the nocebo condition experienced higher subjective pain perception and that effect lasted for a week. Just think how crazy it is. They told one group of people that this is going to increase your pain and they told the other people this is going to decrease your pain. And the people who were told it's going to increase their pain actually experienced higher pain even though the heat pain stimulus was identical for both groups. That's why you need to be very careful with listening to people and their side effects, especially on social media. Social media is like an echo chamber for both the placebo effect and the nocebo effect. Some people say I got these amazing results taking this supplement or eating this food. Well, it might be their own placebo experience. And because you heard about their placebo experience, you will also expect to get those same benefits. The same way with the negative side effects. I had terrible side effects taking this supplement or eating this food. I got stomach pain, I got diarrhea, whatever the case is. So now when you are taking the supplement, you're going to expect those same negative side effects when in reality, it's all in your head. As Morpheus from the Matrix said, you have to free your mind. So how can you use the placebo effect to your own practical advantage? The most useful takeaway from the placebo literature is that you can shape your outcomes by shaping your expectations. If you expect positive outcomes, you're more likely to experience them as well, at least to a certain extent. The same way with the nocebo effect. If you expect negative side effects and negative outcomes, you're going to notice them more, you're going to experience more negative side effects. You can also use the placebo effect by making healthful habits feel more intentional by creating some rituals and context around them. Before a walk or a workout, you can tell yourself this will always make you feel better and when you go for the walk, you feel better. If you want to get a good workout, make it a ritual. Same time, same playlist, same pre-workout, whatever it is. If you believe that this is your lucky ritual, that makes you stronger, then you will expect better results and you'll push yourself harder. That's why athletes have all these weird rituals. They wear the same shoes, they wear the same socks, they eat the same food before their games, etc. These are all rituals that enhance the placebo effect. You should also use positive wording and avoid the opposite of negative wording. Instead of saying this is going to suck, frame it that this will help you. So you can use these daily habits and daily rituals to enhance the placebo effect and overall just have positive expectation that things are going to improve or things are going to work out. Because then you want to match that expectation, you want to reach that expectation and your brain is going to put more effort to reach that expectation. 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