[uppsalax]

Thank you so much for sharing, this is a really insightful article!

By the way, a friend of mine is doing a Master's thesis in work psychology at the University of Turin on this subject.

I am a bit ignorant about this topic since I have a business background + work in tech-startups. But I am genuinely passionate about this kind of thing.

The gist of the thesis is that all these dynamic and interdependent aspects (e.g. lack of sleep, stress, social pressures, even for athletes before, after and during a race, even if we think about the influence on self-perception in relation to other people and related expectations on personal performance) can lead to somatization which can come in the form of concussion, but also to burnout or multiple injuries (as my friend is researching on the thesis) and as it happened to me too, in my life.

Practicing yoga or simply going for a walk daily, helped me a lot along that path... and helped many friends of mine as well. But some people can argue that it is the natural outcome of a "placebo effect".

All of these are very interesting talking points and the inherent dynamics behind vicious cycles (echoing @raghuveerdotnet's comment) is still not crystal clear and needs further research and experimentation.

What are your thoughts?

[wongarsu]

> But some people can argue that it is the natural outcome of a "placebo effect".

What would a placebo effect even be when talking about lack of sleep, stress, etc.?

In medicine the size of the placebo effect seems to depend on the procedure. A placebo surgery is more effective than a placebo injection, which is more effective than a placebo pill. So if you want to test if an injection is better than a placebo you compare it to a placebo injection like saline water, something where there's no way it can have a medical effect beyond the psychological effect. But that would mean that to evaluate meditation you would have to compare it to some kind of fake meditation, maybe breathing exercises that have no viable way to be effective beyond the placebo effect. But we don't know nearly enough about neuroscience to come up with such a thing.