A new study from Australia suggests that when given a placebo that they believe to be a performance-enhancing drug, some athletes, especially if they are male, not only believe their performance improves, but actually show real measured improvements in performance, lending support to the idea that “mind over matter”, or the power of the mind, plays an important role in the development of athletic prowess.

The study, which was funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Australian Government Anti-Doping Research Program, is the work of Jennifer Hansen, RN, lead author and nurse researcher at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia, and was presented at the The Endocrine Society’s 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, which took place from 15th to 18th June this year.

Plans to publish the study in a journal were not mentioned in the press statement.

Hansen said that the “placebo” effect they found in their study on how the power of the mind affects physical performance was greater in male recreational athletes than in females.

“Athletes are doping with growth hormone to improve sporting performance despite any evidence it actually improves performance,” said Hansen, explaining that she and her colleagues wanted to find out if any improvement in performance was because of the drug itself or because the athlete believed the drug was working.

Hansen and colleagues recruited 64 volunteers, all young adult recreational athletes, and randomly assigned them to two groups. One group took a growth hormone (a drug that is banned from use in sports), and the other group took an inactive placebo. Both groups took the drugs for 8 weeks.

The study was double blinded, that is neither the athletes nor the drug administrators knew whether they were being given an active drug or a placebo.

At the end of the 8 weeks, the researchers asked the athletes to say which agent (growth hormone or placebo) they thought they had taken and if they thought their performance had changed. The volunteers also underwent “before and after” physical performance tests to measure endurance, strength, power and sprint capacity.

The results showed that:

  • Men were significantly more likey to think they had received the growth hormone than women.

  • “Incorrrect guessers”, that is volunteers who took the placebo but thought they were on the growth hormone, believed their performance had improved.

  • Incorrect guessers also showed some real improvement in all the measured tests of performance.

  • This was the same for male and female incorrect guessers.

  • But jump height (measure of power) was the only test to yield significant measured improvement among the incorrect guessers.

Hansen said she and her colleagues concluded that:

“The results of this study suggest that the placebo effect may be responsible, at least in part, for the perceived athletic benefit of doping with growth hormone for some people.”

According to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), human growth hormone (hGH) is banned for both in and out of competition use under the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) List of Prohibited Substances and Methods.

A blood test for hGH was first used at the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, in the summer of 2004. Other tests are also being developed.

hGH is a hormone involved in in cell metabolism and skeletal growth that is synthesized and secreted by cells in the anterior pituitary gland at the base of the brain.

It works by stimulating the liver and other tissues to secrete insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which in turn encourages processes that grow bone, muscles and organs.

Reported side effects include: diabetes in prone individuals; aggravation of cardiovascular diseases; pain in the muscles, joints and bones; high blood pressure and heart problems; abnormal growth of organs; and a hastening of osteoarthritis.

People who naturally have too much hGH have many of these symptoms and many have significantly shorter life spans.

Click here for World Anti-Doping Agency.

Source: Endocrine Society, World Anti-Doping Agency.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD