84: Think Yourself Healthy

Health comes from our controlled actions, right? Hopefully from good nutrition, exercise, and sleep. If it’s acute, maybe a medicine or surgery or treatment. “Thinking yourself healthy” is woo woo psycho babble and hardly tangible science. Or is it? Dr James and I have been studying the topic and thinking through it in our own lives. A book we are reading cites a study where people worked out their biceps, with dumbbells, just as we expect in order to grow a bigger bicep. But half of the test subjects were tasked with just thinking about growing their bicep. The first group using dumbbells, grew their biceps. They measured bigger. The second group who just thought about it, also, got bigger biceps. Not as much, but take the measuring tape, and sure enough...bigger. Yeah. So take that to your health. As you’ll hear in this show, I talk about an injury I have. The only mental input I give it is...negative. According to this study I could be helping heal it with my thoughts, but currently I’m making it worse.

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