Mindset
Do you really want to know your genetic risk for heart disease? Would knowing this information alter your genetic risk by making you more likely to get heart disease?
This research study showed that just knowing this risk changed cardiorespiratory physiology, exertion, and running endurance. Merely receiving genetic risk information changed individuals’ cardiorespiratory physiology, perceived exertion and running endurance during exercise.
Effects of perceived genetic risk on outcomes are sometimes greater than the effects associated with actual genetic risk.
It is about mindset.
DNA samples were taken from all participants. One hundred sixteen were put through an exercise test; 107 ate a specially prepared meal. Baseline levels were taken in terms of gut peptides – hormones –for the diet part of the study, and their oxygen conversion rates in the exercise part of the study.
Mindset
Knowing Results of Genetic Testing
All were tested for one of two genes – one that research has associated with obesity and the other with exercise capacity. During the first round of tests, the researchers could see small differences in either exercise capacity or satisfaction after the meal, depending on which version of the gene the participants carried. Participants with the protective version of the exercise gene had slightly better exercise capacity. Those with the protective version of the obesity gene felt slightly more satisfied after the meal. That is what is expected
Of the genetically at-risk people, half were told they were at risk and half were told they were protected. And the same was told to those with the protected genes. But since this was done randomly, some had been lied to.
They received reading material that helped explain the effects of having the protective or non-protective form of the two genes. In the obesity group, participants read research summaries suggesting that the non-protective version of the obesity gene made them produce less of a hormone that relays an “I’m full” signal to the brain. In the exercise group, participants read that people with a non-protective gene wouldn’t perform as well during exercise. Experimenters were setting mindset.
People told they had increased genetic risk for exercise capacity performed worse. Those told they were protected genetically for exercise capacity performed at similar levels as their baseline. Those who were told they were genetically predisposed to feel less full felt less full than people told they were genetically predisposed to feel more full. So what mattered was not the form of the gene they had, but what form of the gene they were told they had. It is mindset that matters.
But the research documented physiological response as well. In the diet study, those told they had the protected gene, who would feel more full, actually physiologically had more of the fullness hormone than those who were told they were at risk.
Mindset
Your Body Follows What Your Mind Predicts
Your mind is trying to predict what will happen. And the brain being intricately connected to every system in the body changes things. It adapts in order to prepare for what it thinks is going to occur next. And when the brain thinks I’m not eating enough, I’m not going to feel full, it changes its physiology accordingly.
On the running side, participants were hooked up to a mask and that measured oxygen-carbon dioxide output for every single breath throughout the running test. People who were told they had increased genetic risk, had decreased lung capacity by about 2 liters of air per minute. And it also decreased their ability to remove toxic carbon dioxide buildup.”
Receiving genetic risk information puts you in a mindset, and this mindset can have an impact on your body as well as how you feel and how you behave. The data confer with a lot of other studies that show our minds are not irrelevant. They matter and they probably matter in most conditions. We know that they matter a lot when it comes to the cardiovascular system and when it comes to the endocrine system, the systems that we worked with here.”
Input and Impact
Not only genetic risk information puts you in a mindset that impacts on your body, how you feel and how you behave. Virtually all input into your brain impacts in some way. Not only impact from outside sources. You can input and impact with things that help, not hurt. Most people input and impact hurtfully and irrationally. Input and impact rationally with Insight Meditation, Ki Breathing Meditation, Open Focus, Attention Therapy Metacognitive Therapy and all the other effective Attention Therapies in this blog.
The quickest, most effective input is to adjust posture and breath deeply. Think that you are two inches taller and stretch upwards from the lower spine. An effective way of doing this is to model someone taller with great posture. It is also the quickest, most efficient way to look better. Try it in front of a mirror.
Self-help books that help:
Total Self-Renewal through Attention Therapies and Open Focus
The Open-Focus Brain: Harnessing the Power of Attention to Heal Mind and Body
