IN FOCUS PLACEBO
he chances are you’ve heard of the placebo eff ect;
the chances are you’ve also heard it described in a
dismissive way. Even the Oxford English Dictionary
defi nes a placebo as ‘a substance that has no therapeutic
eff ect’, so it’s little wonder it has become known as fake
medicine: a worthless trick of the mind.
But the placebo eff ect – a desirable outcome
resulting from an expected or learned response to
a treatment – has been shown time and again to be very real indeed. Credible
scientifi c studies have shown placebos can have powerful eff ects on strength,
endurance and pain tolerance, and tests have highlighted performance
improvements for weightlifters, sprinters, endurance runners and cyclists.Countless anecdotal accounts also
suggest the eff ect is at work across
the spread of sports and full range of
abilities, with both subjective benefi ts
such as pain relief and objective
performance results reported. In
medicine, the placebo eff ect has
brought improvements for suff erers of
irritable bowel syndrome, depression
and migraines, among many other
things. Some research has even
measuredpositiveimpacts when those taking part were told they were getting
a chemically inactive treatment.
“Th ere’s no reason to doubt that placebo eff ects work across the spectrum
in sport,” says Chris Beedie, an honorary professor of psychology at the
University of Kent, and director of science and research at Chamonix Hard Cross
Performance, who has been studying the placebo eff ect for 15 years. “We get a“Perhaps because
of this lack of
objectivity, a
huge industry of
recovery products
has emerged:
think foam
rollers, hyperbaric
chambers and
compression gear”
Chris Beddie
is pro placebo