"Brainpower beats popping pills.
Many athletes credit drugs with improving their performance, but some of them may want to thank their brain instead. Mounting evidence suggests that the boost from human growth hormone (HGH), an increasingly popular doping drug, might be caused by the placebo effect.
In a new double-blind trial funded by the World Anti-doping Agency, in which neither researchers nor participants knew who was receiving HGH and who was taking placebo, the researchers asked participants to guess whether or not they were on the real drug. Then they examined the results of the group who guessed that they were getting HGH when, in fact , they had received a placebo. That group improved at four fitness tests measuring strength, endurance, power and spring capacity. The study participants who guessed correctly that they were taking a placebo did not improve, according to preliminary results presented at the society for endocrinology meeting in June.
(...)
HGH may not be helpful at all, reveals a recent review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Endocrinologist Hau Liu of the Stanford University and his colleagues looked at 44 studies and found that although HGH did increase athletes lean body mass, it did not lead to improvements in athletic performance in double-blind trials."
Scientific American Mind - Volume 19 Number 5
Ps: I'll be posting some articles from the SAM magazine that I find interesting to discuss here. (though, almost everything would be interesting to discuss, I won't copy the whole magazines)
Many athletes credit drugs with improving their performance, but some of them may want to thank their brain instead. Mounting evidence suggests that the boost from human growth hormone (HGH), an increasingly popular doping drug, might be caused by the placebo effect.
In a new double-blind trial funded by the World Anti-doping Agency, in which neither researchers nor participants knew who was receiving HGH and who was taking placebo, the researchers asked participants to guess whether or not they were on the real drug. Then they examined the results of the group who guessed that they were getting HGH when, in fact , they had received a placebo. That group improved at four fitness tests measuring strength, endurance, power and spring capacity. The study participants who guessed correctly that they were taking a placebo did not improve, according to preliminary results presented at the society for endocrinology meeting in June.
(...)
HGH may not be helpful at all, reveals a recent review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Endocrinologist Hau Liu of the Stanford University and his colleagues looked at 44 studies and found that although HGH did increase athletes lean body mass, it did not lead to improvements in athletic performance in double-blind trials."
Scientific American Mind - Volume 19 Number 5
Ps: I'll be posting some articles from the SAM magazine that I find interesting to discuss here. (though, almost everything would be interesting to discuss, I won't copy the whole magazines)
