I noticed an article about the placebo effect in New Scientist recently. Today I found an article about the phenomenon in the Guardian and apparently there’s been a programme about it on BBC Radio 4 as well.

Four weeks later the researchers measured everything again. The group who had been tutored about the health benefits of their work now perceived that they did more exercise than before - unsurprisingly - while the group who were left alone didn’t change. Neither group had changed their actual levels of activity.But amazingly, despite no change in actual exercise levels, in the intervention group, simply being told about the value of what they were already doing caused a significant change for the better on every single one of the objective health measures recorded: weight, body fat, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio and blood pressure.

Read the rest here: Healthy mind, healthy body

Here’s a blog post with links so that you can listen to the show online. My Placebo programme on BBC Radio4