Transcript
A (0:00)
Today's bite sized episode is sponsored by the brand new formulation of AG1, the daily health drink that has been in my own life for over six years now. Some of the upgrades in the new formula include more magnesium which supports muscle function and the ability of our nervous systems to relax. And it also now contains five instead of two strains of bacteria to reflect the latest advancements in microbiome science. It also contains key nutrients in bioavailable forms the body can easily and readily utilize, maximizing their potential benefits. AG1 makes it simple to be the best version of you over 70 ingredients, one scoop once a day for less than a cup of coffee. And right now AG1 are giving my audience a special offer worth 58 pounds which is almost 80 US dollars. You will get 10 free travel packs and an awesome welcome kit with your first subscription. To take advantage go to drinkag1.comlivemore welcome to Feel better Live More bite size. Your weekly dose of positivity and optimism take get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 537 of the podcast with professor of psychology at Harvard University, Dr. Ellen Langer. Ellen has spent decades studying how our beliefs and perceptions can directly influence our physical health, from how we age to how we heal and even how our immune system system functions. In this clip we explore some of her landmark research. The implications of your work and what you're talking about are so, so profound for people when they really understand how much our mindset influences every single aspect of our lives. Some of your studies, the counterclockwise study, the chambermaid study, the nursing home study, these are legendary. In fact, a lot of listeners I'm sure will have heard about them without necessarily knowing that you were the creator and the author of these studies. So could you just go through some of these top line studies to explain some of your work to my audience, please?
B (2:36)
Okay, well, so I got into all this in the first place with a nursing home study where we took people in nursing homes and we either gave them tender loving care is the comparison group, or we gave them choices to make and a plant to take care of. And we went back 18 months later and twice as many people in the group that we gave these active choices to were still alive. So then the first thing that came to me is, well, wait a second, how is it that making a choice translates into longevity? And that led me to the mindfulness work. Um, but the mindfulness work here, you know, how is it your thoughts have all these powerful physical effects on you? And I, I Started to think that, well, it was clear to me that we had. It had this effect on us. This was before people were talking about mind body connection. We had a mind and a body. And the big question was, well, how do you get from this fuzzy thing called the thought to something material called the body? And these are just words. So I argue let's put the two together, even if it's just for useful purposes, heuristic purposes, although now I think it's literally true. Put the mind and body back together, then wherever you're putting one, you're necessarily putting the other. Wherever you're putting the mind, you're putting the body. And the question is, how you get from one to the other goes away. Now, I've been talking about this. I published the counter clockwise study in 1981, a long time ago. Takes so long for things to change and people finally start talking about mind, body connection. That's wrong. You have the same problems. How are they connected? See it as one thing. So the first study that we did and the BBC did a replication of this called the Young Ones. But to go back to the study itself, what we did was to take a retreat and retrofitted to 20 years earlier and had elderly men live there as if they were their younger selves. So they discussed past events as if they were just unfolding. For example, in a period of time as short as one week, we found their vision improved. When have you ever heard an old person's vision improving without medical intervention? Their hearing improved their strength, their memory, and they looked noticeably younger. That was the first test of mind body unit. The second test, which was a few decades later, was we take these chambermaids. This is work I did with Ali Crum. And very simply, first ask them how much exercise are they getting. These are women who are exercising all day long, cleaning the hotel and motel. Still, they thought they're not getting any exercise, because exercise, they believed, according to the Surgeon general, who sits at a desk all day is what you're doing after work. And after work they were just too tired. Very simple study. Divide them into two groups, and we're going to teach one group that their work is exercise. So we're changing their minds. They're taught working on this machine at the gym is like making a bed and so on. We teach them they are getting lots of exercise. So you have two groups now. One who doesn't think they get any exercise, one that does. They're not eating any differently from each other. They're not working any harder. Nevertheless, simply Changing their minds to see their work as exercise resulted in a loss of weight, a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure kingdom. An example of another. We take people who have type 2 diabetes. We take many measurements. We're going to have them play computer games, and there's a clock there, and they're told, change the game you're playing every 15 minutes or so. That ensures that they'll look at the clock. Unbeknownst to them, the clock is rigged, so it's going twice as fast as real time, half as fast as real time or real time. And the question we're asking is, will blood sugar level vary based on clock time, perceived time, or real time? And it turns out, perceived time.