What If You Believed You Were Taking Steroids- Understanding The Placebo Effect
The following is the transcript of the video below:
So what would happen if you believed wholeheartedly
that you were using performance enhancing drugs,
to help increase your muscle mass,
decrease your body fat,
increase your strengths,
and here’s the catch,
what would happen if you thought you were using it
and you weren’t using anything at all,
you were being given a placebo.
Now when I was younger,
I would have said that absolutely nothing would happen,
but my first hand experiences over the years,
point to a different outcome,
and in this video
I’m going to talk about a story
about someone who actually did think
that they were using steroids
and how remarkable their transformation was as a result,
all because of the power of suggestion.
The Widespread Use of Placebo by Physicians & Pharmaceutical Companies
So we all know about the placebo effect.
We know that pharmaceutical companies
use it to their advantage
and we also know that in many cases,
when physicians prescribed something,
when someone comes into their office
and they can’t really figure out how to help them,
that prescription isn’t necessarily,
supposed to do anything
but create a strong placebo effect
to make the person feel better
and in a lot of cases, it does work.
The question is,
how powerful is the placebo effect.
Now, a lot of my ideas and philosophies
regarding not using supplements at all,
come from some of my first hand experiences
with the placebo effect
and really seeing how powerful suggestion can be.
Real Life Steroid Placebo Example Of Someone Who Believed They Were Using Steroids
One example, and perhaps
an example that is critical to my understanding
of how the human mind really works
happened back in Trinidad when I was a teenager.
Now in Trinidad practical jokes are a staple.
The guys in the gym would play practical jokes on each other
all the time.
It was just something that people did
and sometimes those practical jokes were,
I would probably say in retrospect a little bit out of hand.
One such practical joke
was played on this one particular guy
who shall we say for lack of a better word,
wasn’t the most popular person in the gym,
but who constantly talked about
wanting to use Anabolic Steroids.
Now back then unlike how things are now,
anabolic steroids were only available
to a close number of bodybuilders
who were kind of in the know,
and in order to use steroids,
you had to be on good terms with them
in order to get access to those drugs
and as a teenager growing up,
I had already made the decision
I wasn’t going to use drugs,
but you kind of knew who,
the ones who had the drugs
and the ones who were giving out the drugs
as it wasn’t something that was kept a secret,
but if you weren’t on good terms with them,
there was no way whatsoever
that you were going to have access to those drugs
and there was also some degree of responsibility
on their part as well
in terms of,
they didn’t want to just sell it to anybody.
They really were a little bit conscientious
of the fact that what they were selling
was something that could have catastrophic side effects
if used improperly and even if used properly,
to be very honest.
So this one particular guy in the gym,
they didn’t like him very much,
but he was persistent.
He would constantly talk about
what he would do if only he could get access to drugs,
and I was in the locker room when some of the bigger guys
were talking about playing this horrible joke on him.
Now the joke was
that they were going to give him an injection of water
with some alcohol in it,
tell him it was steroids,
and then have a great laugh afterwards.
Now overhearing this,
I felt really badly about what was going to happen
and I would have liked to have stood up there and said,
“You all, can’t do this,
this is horrible, this is terrible.”
but at the time they outnumbered me significantly
and I was nowhere near as large as I am today
and they looked at me
because they saw that I had heard what was going on.
And it was a bit of a look to say
“You better not say anything
about what’s going on over here.”
and so I elected
to not have anything to do with it whatsoever,
but I did see the conversation
that he had with some of them,
and I saw how enthusiastic he was
about the prospect of being able
to finally use anabolic steroids.
and since he was,
shall we say again,
not the most discreet of individuals
when he started the injections,
he was very vocal about the fact that he had started
and very vocal about the fact that he was on steroids
and very happy that he was on steroids.
So this was all, you know,
supposed to be this big practical joke and laugh,
but then something very strange happened.
He started getting a little stronger,
just a little stronger.
Then he started to get a little stronger
and as the weeks went by
and these guys were horrible enough
to literally have this guy and meet them in the locker room
once a week,
to give him an injection with nothing in it
which right there,
the idea of injecting someone in the first place
with anything is kind of
you know makes me cringe
but the fact that they were injecting him with,
you know, water and some alcohol so it would burn
’cause their idea was if it burned
it would make him feel like it was more potent
and real, absolutely terrible
but as the weeks went on,
he didn’t get a little stronger
he kept on getting stronger
to the point where it became noticeable.
Body Transformation from The Steroid Placebo
He was squatting maybe around 225 pounds
when you first started.
He wasn’t that big of a guy
he must’ve been about 155 pounds or so,
but by six,
then he started to put weight on,
and he put on maybe about 10 to 15 pounds
of what looked like muscle.
His squat went from 225 to about 350 or so,
his bench press where he was barely bench pressing
more than a plate and a little plate and some tens,
he was bench pressing easily,
245 on each side for repetitions.
So he was getting bigger
and he was getting stronger,
the same way that someone who would be on steroids would.
Now I was training as hard as I could.
I was eating perfectly
and my gains were nowhere near
what he was experiencing, nowhere near.
So there was no point where we could say
that he was just experiencing a growth spurts ,
a natural growth spurt.
He had been training for a couple of years,
longer than I had been training,
and yet he was really going
through this radical transformation,
both physically and in terms of his performance,
and then I saw him in the locker room
while he was posing and showing off his new build muscle,
and he had acne all over his back.
His upper back was covered with acne.
The same way it would be
for someone who was using anabolic steroids.
He was exhibiting all the outward signs
of an anabolic steroid user.
So of course, I thought to myself,
well, maybe he did put something into his injections
and thought nothing of it,
until there was a big confrontation at the gym.
The guy who was giving him the injections,
came up to him on the gym floor
and demanded to find out who he was getting steroids from.
Now this guy wasn’t too bright,
So he looked at him and said,
“I’m only getting the injections from you.
I’m not using anything from anybody else.”
and he didn’t believe him.
He said, “You must be getting something
from somebody else
because how is it possible that you are so much bigger,
so much stronger,
you have acne all over your back
and we’re not giving you anything.”
So that was a big reveal.
That was a big moment where they finally came up and said
that they were not giving him actual steroids,
and if his reaction was really odd,
he said that that was impossible,
that there was no way
that what he was being given wasn’t steroids
This post first appeared on Naturally Intense Health & Fitness, please read the originial post: here
