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Can you lose weight just by thinking about it?
Can you make better decisions by holding your pee?
The answer is, maybe!
Pylin, what are you talking about?
These statements are in the realm of possibility due to a super powerful type of connection.
The mind-body connection.
“I think, therefore I am./Je pense, donc je suis”
This Descartes quote has always represented the long-held paradigm of separating the mind and the body. For example, psychiatrists would use to only prescribe pharmaceuticals to help treat depression “in the brain” of those who suffer from it.
But turns out, the new paradigm is that the mind and body are so connected they are pretty much ONE. What you do to your body can impact your mind, and what’s going on in your mind can impact your body. In fact, psychiatrists are now prescribing aerobic exercises to help treat depression, anxiety, ADHD, and even addiction.
As someone with a deep interest in psychology, I thought I’d share with you how intertwined our bodies and minds are by sharing some interesting studies as evidence of this connection.
Evidence for your body affecting your mind
Your physical state can influence your perception and preferences.
There is a theory called “embodied cognition”, which in simple terms reflect that idea that the mind (cognition) is shaped by the entire body. If the body feels a certain way, it may activate a certain mental model in the brain of the same concept, and colour one’s perception.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo (shout out to my alma mater!) conducted a study under this theory. In this study, the researchers found that participants who sat on unstable/wobbly chairs rated famous couple’s relationships as more unstable than those who sat on stable chairs. So the state of their body - slight wobble - influenced how they perceived the world.
Moreover, when asked to rate traits they preferred in their potential romantic partner, these same folks in the unstable (chair) condition reported preferring stability-related traits in their romantic partners more than those in the stable (chair) condition. Stability-related traits are things like being trustworthy and reliable, compared to instability-related traits such as being spontaneous and adventurous; and traits irrelevant to stability such as loving, good with money, and funny.
Your physical state can influence your judgement of others and how you behave.
In one experiment, some participants were asked to hold a hot coffee cup while others were asked to hold ice coffee in their hands. This was disguised as not being part of the study, but just as a favour to the experimenter. Researchers found that those who held the hot coffee in their hand rated a fictitious “Person A” as a warmer person, compared to those who were given an ice coffee cup to hold.
The same researchers demonstrated that those who experienced physical warmth also acted more warmly/prosocially to others. In their second experiment, some participants were asked to hold hot while others were asked to hold cold pads (as part of a guise in product testing). The outcome they were looking for is who acted more warmly, measured by their decision on whether to give away their payment/reward for being part of the study, vs keeping it for themselves. They found that participants who held hot pads decided to gift their reward to friends more than those who held cold pads.
Another example of how your physical state can influence how you behave is related to hunger. Although we may think that being hungry “only” impacts our physiology, it also impacts our psychology and how we behave. Think back to the last time you (or someone you know) were “hangry”. It’s a colloquial term for being angry and acting in an angry way because one is hungry. (And I’ve experienced this myself many times). There are actually bigger consequences of long term hunger. Multiple studies have shown that long term hunger or chronic lack of reliable food source (i.e., if you live in poverty and can barely secure your next meal) can lead to the psychological sense of food insecurity - not knowing when the next opportunity for a meal is coming. This phenomenon has been shown to produce “a specific cluster of negative behaviours: increased impulsivity and hyperactivity, increased irritability and aggression, increased anxiety, and a propensity to use rewarding narcotics.” However, if food insecurity persists even longer, it can then lead to depression and lethargy. "Prolonged food uncertainty causes so much psychological entropy that a sense of helplessness eventually sets in and other systems start deteriorating.”
Your physical state can influence your decision-making.
One study showed that those who had full bladders and thus were practicing impulse control (i.e., not pee their pants) were more likely to also demonstrate better impulse control in other domains. In this study, the participants with full bladders made better financial decisions related to delayed, but larger financial rewards (compared to choosing immediate, but smaller financial rewards).
(Side note: this finding was for “optimal” levels of urination urgency and control. Participants had to rate how urgently they had to go urinate and on average rated 5/7. This probably wouldn’t work if you get to 7/7 and your brain shuts down and all you can focus on is not peeing your pants!)
Another study manipulated levels of fullness vs hunger and found that participants became economically more risk-averse (being safer) when they just had a large meal. Risk levels were measured by participants’ selection between a lower reward value with higher probability payouts (risk-averse or safer choice) vs higher reward value with lower probability payout (riskier choice). But note that the effect lasted for only 1 hour post eating.
Yet another study showed that, when judges lost sleep due to changes in daylight savings time (“spring forward”), they tend to give longer sentences to defendants, compared to other days of the week, and all other Mondays of the years, across many years.
Also throwing in here that exercising your physical body also impacts your mind in many ways:
Decreases stress
Decreases social anxiety
Improves processing of emotions
Increases energy, focus and attention
Improves memory
Decreases “brain fog"
Evidence for your mind affecting your body
Now these are the studies that have been blowing my mind about how impactful the mind is!
Your belief of how healthy or indulgent a drink is directly impacts your body’s metabolism.
Researchers randomly assigned two groups of participants to the “healthy drink” group to drink a low-calorie milkshake with 0% fat, 0 added sugar and only 140 calories; and an “indulgent drink” group to drink a high-calorie milkshake with fat, sugar, and 620 calories.
After they consumed the drink, the researchers measured their ghrelin hormone levels, which is the hormone that regulates metabolism and our hunger levels.
For example, the rise of ghrelin levels signal hunger and slows down our metabolism in case we don’t actually find food; and the fall of ghrelin levels signal that we have had enough food, and revs up our metabolism to burn the calories from the food.
Thus, it would make sense to assume that ghrelin rises and falls according to the objective amount of calories consumed.
The researchers found that ghrelin levels dropped 3x more in those who consumed the indulgent drink vs those who consumed the healthy drink.
But, the catch was, both groups were drinking the exact same drink that had 300 calories each! So the only difference was what they were told they were drinking. This shows evidence that what we believe about our food "actually affects our body’s physiological processing of the nutrients that are consumed,” says Alia Crum, the lead researcher of the study.
Your belief of how much exercise a certain activity is also directly impacts your body’s metabolism and shape.
In a study with hotel maids, the maids were randomly assigned to two groups, where the first group just went about their normal work day changing bedsheets, vacuuming rooms, etc. and not told anything special, while the second group also went about their normal work day with the addition of researchers telling them how many calories they are burning for each task they are doing, and that their daily activity levels already met the US surgeon general’s recommendation for daily exercise/movement.
One month later, the researchers went back to measure the hotel maids’ weight, blood pressure, body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index, and found that the group that believed that their daily work tasks were “exercise” had a significant drop in all the health variables (despite the maid’s jobs not changing)!
Your visualization of exercising can make you actually stronger.
A review of sports psychology literature found that indeed, “coupling mental imagery [or visualization] with physical training is the best suited intervention for improving strength performance” compared to only doing strength training.
(And if you’re going to do any type of imagery, the more effective version is the internal imagery, where you imagine yourself actually doing the activity, compared to external imagery, where you imagine watching yourself performing the activity.)
Your mind can modulate the perception of pain.
Most of us think that pain is “objective”, such that if we both get burned on the same finger, we would feel the same amount of pain. However, pain by definition is subjective. Thus, you can alter the perception of your pain by altering your mind.
For example, in one study, participants underwent activated pain, and some were devout Catholics and others were not. When shown a picture of the Virgin Mary, the participants who were devout Catholics reported less pain than the non-religious ones, and this effect was not found when they were both shown a non-religious image.
Virgin Mary by Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato (religious image)
Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci (non-religious image)
Finally, more and more evidence is supporting the notion that mindfulness-meditation (both focused attention and open monitoring styles) increases one’s tolerance of pain and reduces self-report levels of pain, with the additional benefit of higher ratings of well-being.
So what does this mean for you?
It means that, it pays to be better in-tuned with your body to understand the state of your mind, and that movement and exercise should always be one of your priorities.
It also means that, your mind has more influence on your biology and physiology than you think it does, so it also pays to work on your mind, such as your belief systems, and where you put your awareness and attention (via mental imagery or mindfulness-meditation). And that you don’t always have to go straight to drugs to help you with issues related to your mind (your thoughts, your emotions)! Exercise and mindfulness seem to be the solution for many of our woes.
Today’s Action:
To become a whole, fully functioning human, it is important that we are aware of our entire body, and how the body and mind impact each other.
This week, try to notice something going on in your physical body that may be influencing your mental state.
These can be things such as length or frequency of your breath, how tight certain muscles in your body are, whether you ate a nutrition dense or empty meal and how that feels, how sugar or processed food affects your energy levels, and how caffeine affects your breathing or feeling.
Side note that as an almost daily meditator this past year, I can now feel how my heart beats different on days that I do vs don’t drink caffeine. It’s fascinating!
If you are not the type of person who lives in your body and only live in your brain, this may not be an easy and may even be a strange feeling. But I do challenge you to try it out.
Try to notice how something in your mind may be influencing your physical body.
The most common example of this would be perceived stress that transfers to your body.
For example, when I am stressed, my back tightens up. So to take care of my body, I actually have to change my mind, because no amount of massage therapist visit will eliminate the muscle tension caused by my mental stress.
Until next time, Transcenders!
~Pylin
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P.P.S. I’d love to hear from you! Let me know if you love a topic, don’t like a topic, want to hear about a certain topic. I’m all about learning from others and connecting!
You can reach me at pylin@drpylin.com