Do you really have to be worried about your tap water?
Fearmongering is everywhere, especially from health and food influencers. Here’s why the “nocebo” effect can be worse than the thing you’re trying to avoid.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Kevin Don. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy, I’m Kevin Don. This week I’m going to be looking into fearmongering in health and fitness as well as one of the outcomes of this kind of message: the NOCEBO effect.
When it comes to marketing, we all know that “sex sells.” This is pretty simple, continuation of the human species is the most powerful driver there is. But by the same token, species continuation also depends on survival. The fight or flight response, driven by fear is one way we can survive, by avoiding or escaping harmful situations. So, we can therefore also say that FEAR sells.
And boy oh boy, do health and wellness companies take advantage of fear to sell their products. You will all have seen advertising where some kind of issue that could cause injury or shorten longevity is brought up, along with the unique product they have to help you avoid this dreadful problem that you didn't even know you had.
Some examples of fear selling could be a car company, with a recent 5-star safety rating, making an advertisement where a lesser car crashes into a wall, hurtling the crash test dummy passengers through the windshield and off a wall. Of course, the solution is you need this 5-star safety-rated car to protect you and your family. Or a fire extinguisher company who has a video of a house going up in flames seconds after a french fry maker catches a spark.
This idea isn't anything new. I was looking at an advertisement for Quaker Oats from 1899 where the whole advertisement focused on their claims that meat is bad for you. Of course, the solution was to eat more oats…
This past week, I have been seeing a lot of posts about removing toxins from your home. I’m absolutely not against this idea—in theory. This recent anti-toxin or perceived toxin craze is part of the whole “primal living” thing. Again, not something I’m against, in theory.
A few claims that I thought were particularly interesting: tap water is harmful because it’s full of pesticides from runoff; all conventional, non-organic laundry products are toxic and will cause health issues; tupperware, plastic containers, and styrofoam are leaking phytoestrogens into the food and making people infertile; ditto with all conventional cleaning products, make-ups and cosmetics, deodorants and perfumes, scented candles, air fresheners, nonstick cookware; and the list of foods that will kill you and make you unable to reproduce ranges from ketchup to cereals and bottled water to salad dressings.
Those are some pretty intense claims. But let's look at some cast iron facts here.
The claims mostly center around a chemical called glyphosate. It’s a herbicide and is, in fact, the most widely used herbicide in the United States. It's on pretty much everything agricultural, with corn, soy, and oat products having the highest residual glyphosate.
Glyphosate has been shown in studies to negatively affect the human nervous system. It also was positively correlated with autism spectrum outcomes, having passed in vitro to babies in the developmental stage. [1]
In 2015, the International Center for Research on Cancer declared it to be a “possible carcinogen.”
Curiously enough, the National Pesticide Center says the opposite, that studies show that glyphosate is not toxic to humans nor does it pass to unborn babies either reproductively nor in vitro.
So, let’s say that we believe it is toxic—there wouldn’t be any harm in removing a pesticide from our diet or our environment. So how can we do that? Well, the bad news is that glyphosate cannot be removed from food by either washing nor cooking. Uh oh. Thats a bit of a red flag.
So what can we do? Well, if we can’t remove it from our food by washing or cooking, then the only answer we have left is we need to stop eating it in the first place. The issue is the USDA and FDA don’t require glyphosate levels to be labeled on foods. In 2020, California tried to pass a bill stating that just that would happen, but it was blocked by a federal judge. Basically, the best hope we have is to eat organic food and meat, because of course, pesticides and herbicides are banned from being used on organicly-raised crops and animals. But due to factors in the environment, such as rainwater contamination and winds blowing contaminated soil from one field to another, even organic food contain some levels of glyphosate—although greatly reduced.
So, those are the facts about glyphosate, but the physiological outcomes of this are just one component. We have to zoom out to a macro view—that being that there are psychological factors at play here also. Aside from the fact that wellness influencers want to sell you their ebook on how to detox your home or their juice cleanse to detox and reset your body, we have to look at the anxiety being caused by making people live in almost perpetual fear of their surroundings. A quick look at some of the videos these people are making and you’ll see darting eyes and a total neurosis that literally everything surrounding them is a toxin, that the government and “big” agriculture and “big” pharma are in cahoots to poison us all as part of some overarching plot, probably something to do with reptilian shapeshifters, the Royal family, and the freemasons. In case you missed it: yes that was all sarcasm.
Are there environmental factors that MAY be toxic to us? Yes. Are we currently consuming them at levels causing toxic overload? Pass, I don’t know. But are the side effects of being so stressed out about toxic loads everywhere worse for you? Most probably! It must suck to not be able to go to the movie theatre with friends because of all the wifi signals and chemicals in popcorn. To not be able to go eat out because the restaurant uses non-stick pans and their kimchi isn't organic. Can't go to the water park with your kids because the chlorine is poisonous or to Disney because… well the Disney thing is a whole new level of “I’m not even going there.”
RELAX and enjoy your life, you only get one and sure, you want to prolong it—I do too! But having chronically high stress, living fearfully, and having no social life is much, much worse for you than a non-grass-fed steak once in a while! This situation where we are having a negative outcome from something that, on paper, at least, should be a positive thing (looking after health) is called the NOCEBO effect.
I’d wager that everyone has heard of the placebo effect. Placebo is basically where something has no therapeutic value—think saline injections or sugar pills—but which alters a patient's perceived outcome. This altered perception can sometimes result in improved outcomes and, in fact, sometimes placebo can outperform other interventions.
However, there is an opposite effect called the nocebo effect, where the perception of the efficacy of nontherapeutic interventions can negatively influence a situation. Common nocebo effects I see in fitness would be things like forgetting your knee sleeves when you go to the gym and therefore believing that you cannot squat. This is in spite of the fact that most of the knee sleeves available are 5mm thick and aren't doing much besides keeping your knees warm. Beneficial squat outcomes from these are placebo and forgetting them one day and not squatting is nocebo.
Other nocebo effects would be using the totally arbitrary algorithm-based feedback on a fitness tracker to say, “oh, I can’t train today, my wearable device says I'm too tired.” Totally ignoring how you actually feel or the fact that it is actually possible to still train without redlining yourself—a nice outdoors walk, an easy swim, or a mobility session are all beneficial even when you’re tired—but often times, I see people allowing a wearable device to nocebo them into not doing anything, which is definitely a less healthy outcome.
The idea that we are constantly being bombarded with toxins is maybe another potential nocebo. As noted earlier, I think there are many positives to just going out to have a meal with friends or family and they outweigh the fact that your broccoli may not be organic. Don't let fearmongering nocebo all the joy out of your life!
If you have a training question, are looking for individual training program design, or just want to say hi, head over to the Get-Fit Guy Facebook page or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com
Get-Fit Guy is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Thanks to the team at Quick and Dirty Tips, Adam Cecil (SEE-sill), Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, and Davina Tomlin (Duh-VEE-nuh TOM-lin). I’m your host, Kevin Don. If you have a question for me, leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104 or send me an email at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com. For more information about the show, visit quickanddirtytips.com, or check out the shownotes in your podcast app.
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9101768/