During a recent study, on Hotel room cleaning attendants, the Harvard University researchers studied over 80 Hotel cleaning staff from 7 different Hotels. It was agreed that Hotel cleaning staff are physically active in their daily jobs and on average clean 15 rooms a day at an average time of 25 minutes per room. The cleaning involves changing bedding, vacuuming, scrubbing and lifting things.
Now this particular study questioned whether most of the cleaning staff actually realised that the work they were doing was in fact good for their health? So the researchers split the workers into two groups with the first group being informed about the benefits of exercise and how many calories they were burning while doing their cleaning work each day, and the second group were simply told the benefits of exercise but were not told how many calories they were burning or that their work constituted a good form of exercise.
The researchers ensured they studied the existing lifestyles of the workers as well as giving them various health tests including weigh-ins. The study was conducted over 4 weeks and the researchers ensured none of the workers had changed their lifestyle habits during the study (such as commenced an exercise program, become a smoker or given up smoking etc etc). In addition to this the Hotel managers ensured each worker received similar workloads over the 4 week period.
The results were very interesting with the group that had been informed daily, about the benefits of the exercise they were doing in their daily work routines and how many calories they were burning, showing a significant reduction in body weight, Body Mass Index, Waist to Hip ratio and Blood Pressure. The other group that were not told of the calories they were burning or the benefits of the exercise they were doing in their normal day to day jobs, showed none of these improvements.
This is a classic case of the Placebo Effect and reinforces the power of our brains in relation to the results we get from our exercise, diets etc. There is a great lesson to be learned here that if you strongly believe in your own mind that the exercise you are doing is going to improve your body, chances are it will!! This can be applied to other aspects of your life as well – the power of visualisation and the brain should NOT be underestimated.
To see if you have enough activity in your daily routine already why not fill out your own online health and lifestyle check
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