Welcome to Trained, a podcast exploring the cutting edge of holistic fitness.

I'm Ryan Flaherty, the senior director of Performance at Nike.

On every episode, I call up the world's leading experts and athletes to talk about mindset,

movement, nutrition, recovery, and sleep. All the ways to train your body and mind.

Today, I'm catching up with a research psychologist who's proving that the way we think

has measurable effects on the way we feel, heal, and perform.

Our brain is intricately connected to every organ in the body, and subtle changes in the way we

think can change how our physiology is responding at every moment.

It changes what you pay attention to, changes how you feel emotionally, it changes our motivation,

and it changes what our bodies are prepared to do, and what our bodies prioritize.

That was Dr. Alia Crumb, talking about how our thoughts and beliefs exert a constant push and pull

on every system of our body. I think a lot of us are tempted to fly past this pretty casually.

To go, of course, I know that. Mind over matter, right? But Dr. Crumb's work has shown that the

power of mindset goes far beyond what most of us would imagine, and that it can be measured

just as precisely as we can measure weight, blood pressure, or hormone levels. But guess what?

Her research shows that mindset affects all three. Today, I'm getting a run down on that research,

which is amazing for a data nerd like me. Dr. Crumb also gives us a crash course on why we should

never say just a placebo, and some real-world application for one of the toughest questions in the

history of science. How did he get a two-year-old to go to sleep?

Hey, Alia, nice to meet you. Hey, Ryan. Great to meet you.

Thank you for taking the time to join us to really appreciate it.

It's really exciting to be here. Could you summarize just your professional background,

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