Science only gives us probabilities. We can't predict the individual case. When we're given a diagnosis that suggests terminal illness, people treat you as if you're dying. Very often, our expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies. When you are given agency, your body reacts as if it matters. Spontaneous remissions are not nearly as infrequent as most people assume. My mother gets breast cancer, and it metastasizes to have pancreas. That's the endgame. Nevertheless, he was magically gone, and the medical world couldn't explain it. Dr. Ellen Langer, the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard, she has done 50 years of research surrounding the notion that the way we think can change the way we view things like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, even the common cold. The very first test of the mind body unity idea, we had people who had type two diabetes, and there was a clock next to the computer. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged. Did blood sugar level follow clock time or perceived time? The mind can literally heal the body. Across a host of very serious illnesses, we're able to control the symptoms. Our expectations are so much more powerful than most of us assume. If the placebo, the pill of surgery in the injection wasn't what helped you, what helped you? You did it yourself. Shhh. Hi, I'm Mayan Bialik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And today we are presenting you with a very, very powerful conversation that has the potential to literally change how we understand health and disease from an entirely different perspective than we've ever looked at before. We're going to break down and explain how the mind can literally heal the body. How they are not two separate entities, but they are one, not only connected, but interconnected. Also, if you thought you knew what mindfulness was and how it can change your life, guess what? We've got an entirely different way to think about mindfulness. We're going to be speaking to a woman known as the mother of mindfulness and the mother of positive psychology. Dr. Ellen Langer, her most recent book is The Mindful Body Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. She was the first woman to be tenured in psychology at Harvard. She's still a professor of psychology at Harvard. She has done 50 years of research surrounding the notion that the way we think impacts the physiological components of our systems and can change the way we view things like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, depression, even the common cold. She is going to describe unbelievable examples of 80-year-old men who age in reverse. How diabetics change the way that they interact with insulin.

How people heal from tumors, talking about drastic reductions in the size of someone's tumor, the implications for how the mind can impact the body are almost unbelievable. Dr. Langer's also going to talk to us about the importance of framing.

What are the words that we use? Is the word remission hurting people more than it's even helping them when we talk about being in remission from cancer? She's also going to give us practical ways to change our expectations and to change the way that our everyday interactions and activities can influence us. She's going to talk about how much perception weighs on our actual health outcomes. It's an astounding conversation. We're very excited to welcome Dr. Langer to the breakdown. Break it down. Thank you for having me. We're very excited to talk to you and you've been sort of treading the boards of mindfulness and a new way to look at health for long before people even knew what mindfulness was. What will people take away from our conversation with you if they are open to looking at a new lens of health and longevity in particular? Well, all of the work I've done and we'll talk about on mind body unity says wherever you put the, you're necessarily putting the body, which gives us enormous control over our health and well-being. It's also the case, and if you read carefully the last book, The Mindful Body, it's, that's good, good book. It says basically, in part, that everything that is was at one time a decision. And decisions are made by people, and for it to be a decision means there was uncertainty. So we tend to respond to things that are as if they're handed down from the heavens. And we don't think to change them. And when you realize how high your seat is, the work you're doing, the food, you're everything, what somebody's decision makes it teaches you that everything is mutable. So it's not just that our thoughts can control our health, it's that every day anything that's frustrating can be changed. Can you talk a little bit about how this became your life's work? I found the example of your mother's diagnosis very powerful. The example even of your food experience in France. You know, there were kind of three moments that led you to become the Dr. Langer that we know. Talk a little bit about your origin story in that sense. Before the examples you mentioned, my grandmother was in a nursing home and when I saw her, she seemed perfectly fine, although they thought she was seen now. We didn't have the diagnosis dementia at that point. And so that seemed strange to me because at that time, like everybody else, I believed you either have whatever it is you don't have it. And again, as you can see in a mindful body, I have a psychological treatment for chronic illness that's based on the fact that symptoms come and go. Then she had talked about a snake in her head. And I knew that she was just too lazy to say my head feels as if there's a sneak in it. And so, they thought there were problems that I didn't think were a problem. So, this is the beginning. And then I saw people in the nursing home just sitting looking half dead, doing nothing. And so, the very first study I did in the nursing home was to go and to give these people choices to make that were silly things, almost, you know, because the powers that they weren't going to let me change the balance of power. So I emphasized that they were capable of and should be making decisions like where to meet with guests and, you know, in your room, in the dining outside, you know, and so on. Anyway, this very simple treatment resulted in people living longer. Wait a second, how could that be? You know, how could it be you're making choices and all of a sudden you're more likely to be alive? So that was the experimental piece that gave rise to the mind-body unity theory. The idea, which we'll get into in our conversation with you, the idea is that when you are given agency and when you believe that you matter, your body reacts as if it matters. But the important thing is, how do you get from, okay, I'm in charge, to the body changing. And when we have ideas of mind and body dualism, there's a big problem because how do you get from this fuzzy thing called a thought to something material called the body. So I thought about this, and you know, I think, well, this is ridiculous. These are just words, mind and body. And so let's put the two together. And then wherever you put the you put the body. Now the story is that led to that idea. When these things happened the idea was nowhere in sight for me. So I got married when I was obscenely young and we go to Paris on a honeymoon and we're in a restaurant and I order a mixed grill. One of the items on the mixed grill was pancreas. Pancreas. I asked my van husband, which of these things was the pancreas. He points to something. I ate everything else. Now comes the moment of truth. Can I get myself to eat the pancreas? And I've sent this before. It still boggles my mind that I thought just because I was now married, it meant that I had to eat the pancreas. But anyway, I thought that I had to eat it I start eating it and I literally get sick

He starts to laugh. I say, yeah, not appropriate any time, but certainly not on our honeymoon

Why are you laughing? And he said because that's chicken you ate the pancreas a long time ago

So they made myself sick

Then I'm probably the only person you know has two important pancreatic stories. So now fast forward, my mother gets breast cancer and it metastasizes to have pancreas. Well, as most people know, that's the end game. Nevertheless, at one point it was magically gone. And the medical world couldn't explain it. So just as I had made myself sick, she had made herself well. And now I was going to study how to explain this or understand this over the next several decades. There was also something else you mentioned about what happened to your mother when the doctors decided that she had cancer. There was a way that she was treated that effectively did not allow for what eventually needed to be her recovery. When we're given a diagnosis that suggests an internal illness, people treat you as if you're dying. And it's very hard in the face of that to go forward feeling robust. And so for my mother, because they assumed she was going to die, they didn't exercise her limbs and what have you. And so then when the cancer finally left, she was in a wheelchair to leave the hospital, because they hadn't exercised her legs. So, I mean, the main part of all of this, let me take a half a step back to to tell people something that puts us all in context. I was at a horse event. And at home, I'm going to make that relevant stay with me. All right. And this man asked me, can I watch his horse reign? Because he's going to get his horse a hot dog. Hot dog. What is he Horses don't eat meat. He comes back with the hot dog and the horse ate it. And that's when I realized everything I thought I knew could be wrong. Now a normal person would be worried about that. Oh my god, I don't know anything. I was thrilled because that meant everything that people said can't be, maybe could be. And so when I thought about this, and I've written about it, that people need to understand that science only gives us probabilities. You know, that if you were to do an experiment to see do horses eat meat, you'd have to say, what kind of horses, how much meat, mix with how much grain, when are you going to give it to a whole bunch of things Then you'd find most of the horses don't eat meat and that's a mouthful. So that's abbreviated horses don't eat meat But in fact some horses do and so when we understand that science is basically telling us probably sometimes Could be rather than is then we're not as likely to just give up in the face of those expectations that are handed to us. You know, that we can't predict the individual case. And when you come down to it, that's really all we care about. You know, if I say to you, this procedure works 90% of the time, that's great. But you're going to be the 10% or part of the 90% and there's no way to know? I think a lot of people wouldn't assume necessarily that reputable scientific inquiry could be so creative, meaning that you would have to have such an open mind in order to approach these things with scientific rigor. Oh, oh yes, but you know, the scientific rigor that's imposed on our use for every single research study should be applauded but should not be confused with determining absolute fact. We can't know. Now the problem is when we think we know, we no longer pain, the attention. So if I think cancer is a killer, I've got cancer, I'm going to die, then both psychologically and also in very real ways, I now remove myself from the world. I dumb do all of those healthy things because I'm going to die anyway. And to understand, you know, doctors, well-meaning, I think they've probably stopped this now, but not that long ago. I've telling you how likely it is, you know, you say, how much time do I have? And they say three weeks. They haven't the Vegas notion that if 70% of the people who present this way have three weeks, doesn't mean you have three weeks. You know, it's very different. And so very often our expectations become self-affilling prophecies. So we have to be careful about what we expect. Now, you know, for the last, oh gosh, on four or five decades, I've been doing research on mindfulness. And mindfulness as I study it has nothing to do with meditation. It's the simple act of noticing, but when you think you know you don't notice. And so, mindlessness, a cute way of understanding it, is frequently an era but rarely in doubt. If you knew what I was going to say next, why would you listen? It's realizing that even if I've said it a thousand times, this time may be different. Alright, so there are two ways to become mindful as I study. It has nothing to do with meditation. Alright, either bottom up, which is actively notice new things about the things you think you know. Walk outside, let's say you've lived where you're living for 10 years walk outside and notice three new things every day

And you'll be surprised if you're living with somebody notice three new things about them when you get to school

The work wherever you're going the supermarket notice three new and you keep noticing new things about the things

You thought you knew and you come to see wow. I didn't know it as well as I thought I did and eventually

You'll do that without having to do it Intentionally like this. The other way is top down Okay, which is understanding that everything is always changing Everything looks different from different perspectives. So we can't know nobody knows So you don't have to feel bad about knowing. Then everything is brand new. So the bottom up leads you to realize, hey, I don't know anything. Pop down the same thing. And all the research has shown that that's literally and figuratively in line with me. You make them one mindful. They live longer. You know, when you're having fun, you might ask yourself, do robots have fun? Of course not, right? And when we're mindless, we know different from robots. And so, the simple act of noticing feels good. It's good for you. It's the essence of what's happening when you're having a good time. It's easy. And so, when you think about the consequences of just being there and noticing, it's hard to find reason not to do it. We have so much data that when people are mindful, they're seen as more attractive, trustworthy, they're better leaders, the things we produce are better. It's not just that it's good for our health. It's good for every aspect of our life. Basically, you know, basically, you might want to use a simple rule.

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because that would be nice. And even if I wanted to do it, the powers that be wouldn't let me. But it's a war. And we have a person sitting in front of a clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged. So for a third of the people, it's going twice as fast as real time. For a third of the people, It's going half as fast as real time,

and for third of the people, it's real time.

And the question we're asking is, does healing result as a function of perceived time or real time? Now, most people assume it's going to heal when it heals. But no, it heals based on how quickly you think time has passed. And we have lots of studies like that. We have it's bleak time. People wake up in a sleep lab. Again, I screw around with the clock. You see you've got two hours more sleep, two hours fewer. The amount of sleep you've got cognitive and physiological functions follow perceived amount of sleep. Yeah, I was just going to mention the sleep clock experiment. Many of your studies focus on time and ways to manipulate time is also it's just it's an easy laboratory manipulation to do. So the notion being that if you convince people that they got more sleep, even if they got less sleep, that perception is enough to make them decide that they are rested. And if you convince them that they got less sleep, even though they got, let's say, a full uninterrupted eight hours. And I think of this for anyone who's had a small child, especially one that wants to nurse all night, you know, the so much of it is about your perception. And I think that's sort of this thread that runs through all of your research and throughout the book as well. And understanding that our perceptions are under our control. So that again, names that we can control all of these things, where otherwise, we might feel sort of helpless. If we want to make it tangible for someone who has a cut, for example, like how far does this extrapolate and does it hold up under like months of not sleeping, is there any biological reality or is it all subjective? Most of the time I do these studies to talk about possibility and I don't know how far you can push it

but let me let me tell you an example that may speak to that and it's wild. So years ago I was part of the division of aging at the Harvard Medical School and the chair at that point was Jack Row, physician. I called Jack one day. I said Jack how long does it take a broken finger to heal? He said I said, I don't know what week.

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