← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
The Science of Mind-Body Unity: Why Your Cells are Always Listening to Your Thoughts & How a Legendary Harvard Psychologist is Redefining the Limits of What is Biologically Possible.
01:22:49
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- [00:00]
Dr. Ellen Langer
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.
- [00:16]
Maya Bialik
When you are given agency, your body reacts as if it matters.
- [00:21]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Spontaneous remissions are not nearly as infrequent as most people assume. My mother gets breast cancer and it metastasizes to her pancreas. That's the end game. Nevertheless, it was magically gone and the medical world couldn't explain it.
- [00:38]
Maya Bialik
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.
- [00:56]
Dr. Ellen Langer
The very first test of the mind, body unity idea. We had people who had type 2 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?
- [01:11]
Jonathan Cohen
The mind can literally heal the body.
- [01:13]
Dr. Ellen Langer
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 surgery, the injection wasn't what helped you, what helped you, you did it yourself.
- [01:37]
Jonathan Cohen
Reggie. I just sold my car online.
- [01:40]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Let's go, grandpa. Wait, you did?
- [01:42]
Jonathan Cohen
Yep, on Carvana. Just put in the license plate, answered.
- [01:45]
Dr. Ellen Langer
A few questions, got an offer in minutes. Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame. You don't say.
- [01:51]
Jonathan Cohen
Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow.
- [01:53]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Talk about fast.
- [01:54]
Maya Bialik
Wow.
- [01:55]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Way to go.
- [01:56]
Jonathan Cohen
So about that picture frame.
- [01:58]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Ah, forget about it.
- [01:59]
Jonathan Cohen
Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested.
- [02:01]
Maya Bialik
Car selling made easy on Carvana. Pick up.
- [02:06]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
These may apply this episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross training tread plus. Powered by Peloton iq, with real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpture, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training tread +@1peloton.com hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
- [02:34]
Jonathan Cohen
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
- [02:35]
Maya Bialik
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.
- [02:50]
Jonathan Cohen
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.
- [03:03]
Maya Bialik
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.
- [03:51]
Jonathan Cohen
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.
- [04:16]
Maya Bialik
Dr. Langer is 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?
- [04:29]
Jonathan Cohen
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.
- [04:39]
Maya Bialik
She's going to talk about how much perception weighs on our actual health and outcomes. It's an astounding conversation. We're very excited to welcome Dr. Langer to the Breakdown. Break it down.
- [04:53]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Thank you for having me.
- [04:55]
Maya Bialik
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?
- [05:14]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Well, all of the work I've done and we'll talk about on Mind Body Unity says wherever you put the mind, 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, my last book, the Mindful Body. That's good, good book. It says basically in part that, 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, your everything was 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.
- [06:18]
Maya Bialik
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. Three moments that led you to become the Dr. Langer that we know. Talk a little bit about your origin story in that sense.
- [06:40]
Dr. Ellen Langer
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 senile. We didn't have the diagnosis dementia at that point. And so that seems strange to me because at that time, like everybody else, I believed you either have whatever it is or you don't have it. And again, as you can see in 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 snake in it. And so they thought there were problems that I didn't think were 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 be 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 area, 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.
- [08:23]
Maya Bialik
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.
- [08:34]
Dr. Ellen Langer
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 thought, 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 mind, you put the body. Now, the stories that led to that idea, when these things happen, 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 then husband which of these things was the pancreas. He points to something. I eat everything else. Now comes the moment of truth. Can I get myself to eat the pancreas? And I've said 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 felt that I had to eat it. I start eating it and I literally get sick. He starts to laugh. I say, not appropriate anytime, 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 I made myself sick. Then I'm probably the only person you know has two important pancreas stories. So now, fast forward. My mother gets breast cancer, and it metastasizes to her 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.
- [10:31]
Maya Bialik
There was also something else you mentioned about what happened to your mother when. 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.
- [10:47]
Dr. Ellen Langer
When we're given a diagnosis that suggests an abdominal 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 tell people something that puts us all in context. I was at a horse event. Now, how am I going to make that relevant? Stay with me, all right? And this man asked me, can I watch his horse for him? Because he's going to get his horse a hot dog. Hot dog? What is he crazy? 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. 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 mixed with how much grain, when are you going to give it to them? 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. 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.
- [13:05]
Maya Bialik
I think a lot of people wouldn't assume necessarily that, you know, 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.
- [13:21]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Oh, yes. But, you know, the scientific rigor that's imposed on or used 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 pay any 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 don't 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 of 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 vaguest 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 fulfilling prophecies. So we have to be careful about what we expect. Now, for the last, oh gosh, 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 error, 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. All right, so there are two ways to become mindful as I study. And it has nothing to do with meditation. All right? 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 that you can, if you're living with somebody, notice three new things about them. When you get to school or work or 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, 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. Top down, the same thing. And all the research has shown that, that that's literally and figuratively enlivening. We make them more 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're no 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, you know, 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. And, you know, basically, you know, you might want to use a simple rule. If it's worth doing, it's worth showing up for.
- [17:05]
Jonathan Cohen
My Ambialix breakdown is supported by Superpower.
- [17:08]
Maya Bialik
When I became a woman of a certain age, something that I've discussed here frequently on the podcast, I had a ton of doctor's appointments to try and pinpoint, like why I wasn't feeling right in my body. But often we're told everything's normal or you're just stressed or that's what getting older feels like. No hormone testing, no real data, no plan. Very, very frustrating. But we're here to tell you that Superpower is a completely different experience. Changing the game for Women's Health as you can see on my sweatshirt, Superpower sends a licensed professional to your home. You can also visit a nearby lab. One simple blood draw with over 100 biomarkers, including detailed hormone testing so that you can actually see what is changing in your female body instead of guessing. This is especially powerful for women who are navigating perimenopause, menopause or trying to decide if hormone replacement therapy might make sense for you. Their app breaks down the insights into female hormones, thyroid health, metabolism, nutrient deficiencies, inflammation, even your true biological age so you can see how your body's actually functioning and track improvement over time. It is so empowering to finally have Superpowers actionable health plan based on real results, not assumptions from targeted supplement recommendations, nutrition guidance that supports hormones and energy, lifestyle and behavioral adjustments designed for women's biology. Superpower doesn't just give you a one time snapshot, it's tracking your results as your body changes. Each test. Building on the last Superpower used to cost $499. Right now it is $199 for the full experience that's more affordable than anything else out there. Know your numbers this year with Superpower make this the year you stop guessing about your health with Superpower. Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time our listeners get an additional $20 off with code BREAK. Head to superpower.com and use the code BREAK at checkout for $20 off your membership.
- [19:03]
Jonathan Cohen
After you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about them. Make sure to mention this podcast to support the show. My ambialix breakdown is supported by our ritual.
- [19:16]
Maya Bialik
Our ritual. This is not your parents couples therapy. This is a modern approach blending weekly sessions with licensed experts and science based digital exercises that you do on your own right in the app between sessions.
- [19:31]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm going to say right here that while I love therapy, I have always said it needs an extra component. How come we're not practicing once a week isn't enough? It's about implementing what we learn and and the insights we get to expedite the change.
- [19:49]
Maya Bialik
Well said Jonathan. No couch, no pressure, no pretending everything's fine. All you do is start by answering a few questions and then our ritual is going to match you with an expert who actually gets your situation. You meet weekly together or separately with your partner. And here's the thing. In between sessions, our ritual offers self guided work via the app videos. Exercises tailored just for you all. Only one of you ready? I've never been in that situation. Totally fine. Busy life sessions can be 20 or 40 minutes. Experts around the world means flexible scheduling that actually works and the best part costs a lot less than traditional therapy. Starting at just $32 a week.
- [20:31]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm going to say something that may blow your mind. Who you are most connected with is the largest influence on how your life is going to go. Why not work on it?
- [20:42]
Maya Bialik
Learn how to communicate without blowing up. Break out of the same old conflict loops. Reconnect emotionally. Navigate parenting. Navigate being long distance from your partner. What is an emotional trigger? Learn about them from conflict mastery and emotional intimacy to rebuilding after infidelity. Our ritual helps you do the work between sessions so progress doesn't stop when the call ends. The that's where the real change happens. Our ritual delivers way more than just talk. Whether you're a couple, an individual, a parent, lgbtq, figuring things out from a distance. Our ritual meets you where you are. Real support, real tools, real change on your terms. Also unlike traditional therapy, our ritual app offers video series and exercises in between sessions. Members do the work make progress independently, which contributes to overall progress. The video series discusses a variety of topics, for example, love after kids, helping you navigate a new normal, growing as parents and partners. Choosing Me video series helps individuals build a better relationship with themselves from setting boundaries and creating healthy relationship patterns to moving from self doubt to self trust. Really anything you need, please go to our ritual.com answer a short questionnaire. Use the coupon code breaker 20 for 20% off your first month that's our ritual.com, code breaker 20 for 20% off YOUR first month.
- [22:06]
Jonathan Cohen
My Ambiox breakdown is supported by Kachava.
- [22:09]
Maya Bialik
You know I've set a few wellness related goals for myself in 2026, like continuing to move my body with taekwondo and really trying to set myself up for a successful healthy year. Jonathan's my accountability buddy. We're working together to keep ourselves motivated and on target and luckily Kachava helps us actually feel good while sticking to those wellness goals. Since adding it to our routine, we have noticed a steady all day kind of energy. The kind that gets you through a morning workout without crashing halfway through and still leaves you patient, focused and present for the rest of the day. Our workouts feel stronger and more fueled thanks to the protein and electrolytes and recovery feels smoother so that sore muscles don't slow us down. The fiber, probiotics and enzymes keep our digestion on track and B vitamins and essential minerals support a healthy metabolism and clear headed focus. I've noticed fewer afternoon brain fog moments and more mental stamina for my endless to do lists. Immune supporting nutrients like vitamin C, zinc and probiotics make us more resilient and I love blending my cachava with frozen fruit, whatever nut milk that I've got on hand and a little peanut butter for extra staying power. And I feel fueled instead of sluggish or hungry an hour later. Kachava is one of those rare rare finds that actually does it all. It's an all in one nutrition shake made with seriously high quality ingredients. No fillers, no artificial flavors, just clean plant based fuel with no GMOs, no soy, no animal products, no gluten and no preservatives. But somehow it still tastes amazing. I love the coconut acai flavor and you will too. Just two scoops gives you 25 grams of plant based protein, 6 grams of fiber plus greens, adaptogens and all the good stuff that your body actually craves. Stick with your wellness goals. Go to kachava.com use code break breakdown for 15% off. That's kachava k a c h a.
- [24:01]
Jonathan Cohen
V a.com code breakdown is it true that just the idea of noticing is hitting us with like a little novelty and that novelty is fueling us in some way?
- [24:12]
Dr. Ellen Langer
It's hard to understand when you think of mind body dualism. How do you get from, so I'm happy or I'm engaged, you know, but remember that we're talking about mind body unity. Whatever we're doing to the mind, we're necessarily doing to the body simultaneously. So we have lots of studies. Let me tell you about a couple of them so people understand. The very first test of the mind body unity idea was what we call the counterclockwise study. People might know this because it's a famous study. And I'm not being obnoxious. I can say it's a famous study. Because if you watch the Simpsons Go to Havana, they actually talking about it. All right, so what we did was we retrofitted a retreat to 20 years earlier. And we had elderly men live there as if they were their younger selves. So they were going to be talking about the past as if it was just unfolding. For example. Right. They lived there for less than a week. What we found was that their vision improved their hearing, improved their memory, their strength, and they looked noticeably younger, which is very compelling. The first of these saying mind and body, is simply one. This study I did with Allie Crumb when she was at Harvard. We took chambermaids, and we asked the chambermaids, how much exercise do you get? And surprisingly, since these women are making beds and cleaning hotel and motel rooms all day long, they don't think they're getting any exercise. Because exercise is what you do after work. So says the surgeon General, after work, they're too tired. All right? Now, if exercise is good for you, then these women who are exercising all day long should be healthier than similar others who are not exercising. Right. But they're not. How could that be? Now, we divide them into two very simple groups. And one group, we teach them their work is exercise. Making a bed is like working at this machine at the gym and so on. And we don't do that to the other group. So now we have one group who's aware, gee, I'm exercising all day long. Now we take a host of measures. The two groups are not performing differently. One isn't working harder than the other. One isn't eating more or less than the other group. Everything is the same until we get to the big measures. Those women who now see their work as exercise lost weight. There was a change in waist to hip ratio, body mass index, and their blood pressure just by changing their minds.
- [26:43]
Jonathan Cohen
It's not just that, you know, they're perceiving things differently, meaning they're not noticing. Now we're talking about the meaning that we're assigning to activities and how we understand that activity to be related to our well being.
- [26:57]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Right. I mean, the only way this study is going to work is if people think exercise is good for you. And so now they seem their workers exercise, therefore they should expect health changes. And that's what we get. Let me give you another study that I recently did with my graduate student Peter Ungo. So we inflict a wound, not a big wound, because that wouldn't be nice and even if I wanted to do it, the powers that be wouldn't let me. But it's a wound. 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 a 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 a sleep study. People wake up in a sleep lab. Again, I screw around with the clock. You see, you got two hours more sleep, two hours fewer or the amount of sleep you got. Cognitive and physiological functions follow perceived amount of sleep.
- [28:19]
Maya Bialik
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, your perception. And I think that's sort of the, this thread that runs through all of your research and throughout the book as well.
- [29:07]
Dr. Ellen Langer
And understanding that our perceptions are under our control. So that again means that we can control all of these things where otherwise we might feel sort of helpless if.
- [29:21]
Jonathan Cohen
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, biological reality or is it all subjective?
- [29:34]
Dr. Ellen Langer
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 Rowe, a physician. I called Jack one day, I said, jack, how long does it take a broken finger to heal? He said, I don't know, a week? I said, what would you say if I said I could heal it by psychological means in five days? He said, all right. I said, what about four days? He said, all right. I said, what about three days? He said, no. I said, okay, what about three days and 23 hours? The point is, at what point, all of a sudden you can't do it.
- [30:20]
Maya Bialik
There are certain biological limits to what we're talking about. There is a floor effect. There has to be a floor effect, just like there's a ceiling effect.
- [30:28]
Dr. Ellen Langer
We're all taught certain things and, you know, a break takes however long to heal and, you know, things unfold in a particular way and it's very hard for us to wrap our heads around. But that was just a theory, that was just an idea. That was just an explanation for what happens with many people, not necessarily all. And, you know, so you asked me about limits. You know, I don't know. But I know that I've undertaken virtually all these studies with the idea in mind to show people that the possibilities far, far exceed what we assume. And that rather, you know, then assume, as I said before, the doctor says you have three weeks to live. That, you know, now you should say, well, how could he or she know that they can't? And how can you make that wrong? How can you actually turn things around for yourself? You're not going to if you don't believe it's possible. If you believe it's possible, you may be able to. I'm not suggesting, you know, that if you have stage four cancer and if left alone, you would die within the week, that, you know, you'll be able to, you know, do a marathon. But I am saying we can't be sure that that can't happen. You can't prove that something can't be when you believe it can, that it's a possibility. You organize yourself differently and you enjoy more of what you're doing. You know, lots of people call me who are given these death sentences health wise. And you know, and I say to them, I Think that if I were told I had three weeks to live or three months to live, I do my best not to waste my time being depressed. I would try to get all the living I could in. And the research that I've already mentioned to you suggests that if we start doing that, if we're fully out there enjoying ourselves, that means we're being mindful. That means the neurons are firing. We may very well be able to turn some of these things around. Spontaneous remissions are very hard to study because you don't know, right? You know, somebody's got a diagnosis, we're expecting them to go downhill. We can't follow all these people and assume maybe one of them is going to reverse. But I think that spontaneous remissions are not nearly as infrequent as most people assume. You know, imagine you go to the doctor, you know, you're in the hospital, and you say, I don't want to die in the hospital. I want to die at home. And so you go home, and all of a sudden you start to say, you know, the hell with this. Let me. I want that glass of wine now, and I want to get out of bed, you know, if I still have any strength to do so, and I want to live, you know, and let's say that there is a spontaneous remission. How likely is it that the first thing, rather than just going and enjoying your life, is I'm going to call the doctor and tell him he was wrong, you know? Do you know what I'm saying? And you have all these people living in areas where there are no hospitals, very few doctors, and so they don't go to the doctor in the first place. So that if the tumor actually goes away, there's no one to know. They didn't even know they had the tumor in time one. So they're not going to know what they don't have at time two. So it's a very hard thing to know just how widespread this is. But if we assumed that it's more widespread than people assume now, people now would assume, oh, one in a million, one in a million. You're not going to organize yourself to make it real. You say, well, maybe it's much more likely. And then your whole attitude changes. Lots of illness results from basically just giving up.
- [34:29]
Jonathan Cohen
That's powerful.
- [34:31]
Maya Bialik
I wonder if you can talk a little bit about some of the diabetes studies that you've done.
- [34:37]
Dr. Ellen Langer
As you so cleverly said, that in a laboratory setting, using a clock is an easy thing to do to turn back time, but what we did was we had people who had type 2 diabetes come to the experiment and we took all sorts of measures. Now we were going. And the reason what I'm going to say is confusing. Just hold on for a moment, it'll become clear. We were going to have them play computer games, and there was a clock next to the computer, and we told them, change the game you're playing every 15 minutes or so. And that would ensure that they look at the clock. And again, the clock was rigged. So for a third of the people, it's going twice as fast as real time, for a third of the people half as fast and the remaining third, it's real time. And the question we were asking was, did blood sugar level follow clock time or perceived time? And by this point, your listeners should know it's perceived time. Our expectations, beliefs are so much more powerful than most of us assume, you know, and so basically, the reason I keep doing all these podcasts, keep writing all these books, is to wake people up to that, you know, in my view and so many decades of this research, I found that most people are mindless almost all of the time. And so essentially, you're sealed in an unlived life and, you know, it's time to break the seal, get engaged, to enjoy whatever is available to you. And none of us know how long we have. You know, we have people now, baby boomers, people my age who are hell bent on they're going to live longer. And so they're out exercising, some of them hating it, and taking all sorts of drugs and supplements and so on, and with the goal of adding more years to their lives. My view is rather than trying to add more years to your life, you should add more life to your years. And oddly, that will probably result in a longer life.
- [36:48]
Jonathan Cohen
You talk about how important belief and expectation is to how we're living. How do people start to change their belief and expectation?
- [36:57]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Whenever you're taught anything is, you know, let a bell go off, you know, how do you know it is who says so? And that it is sometimes for some people, okay, so we have to stop buying into and becoming mindless with all the absolutes we're given. Horses don't eat meat, for example.
- [37:16]
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- [37:46]
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- [38:16]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Next for almost all of us, we do everything we can to get that good thing run as fast as we can from that bad thing. Overlooking the fact that things in and of themselves are neither good nor bad, it's our minds that make them so. And so if the next time there was something bad, you stop and you ask yourself, how might that actually be good? And if the same thing is potentially good or bad, you just sit still. You don't need to run from it or run towards it. You can just be. And you do this sort of thing often enough. You see, I played a part in cognitive behavior therapy decades and decades ago where you would be taught if you went to a cognitive behavior therapist to reframe the current situation. But if you I'm not talking about reframing. You say if you do that often enough, you don't have to, you know, a moment before my computer was going bananas. Nah, so was, you know, if I said, oh my goodness, I'm not going to be able to, you know, when you realize the advantage, if it did just go on the, you know, go out, then I would go and I'd have a late lunch, you know, that would be good too. No matter what happens, it's all potentially good. And you're not lying to yourself because things are not in and of themselves good or bad, but because they're not good or bad. And seeing the bad gets you stressed and crazy. It's probably not wise to do that. Now you interesting, because I think the major cause of illness and the major thing that leads to people's unhappiness is stress. And stress is not a function of events. Stress is a function of the views we take of events. So if you open up that view and notice, you know, let's say I'm afraid I'm going to fail the test I'm afraid my spouse is going to leave me. I'm afraid the podcast is going to be off, or whatever you're afraid of. And you now ask yourself, why might that be wrong? Every time you're stressed, there's actually an expectation that something's going to happen, and when it happens, it's going to be awful. But we can predict. We think we can predict, but we can't predict the individual case. We can predict a treatment is successful, let's say for 75% of the people who are given it. We can't predict for which individuals it'll be effective. All right? So we can predict. So say to yourself, you know, here are three reasons, five reasons why it might turn out to be other than, I'm thinking the person won't leave, I won't flunk the test, my computer won't go on the blitz, you know, whatever. Now then, is the harder part. Let's imagine this thing that you were dreading does happen. How is that actually a good thing? And if you can master how this thing you dreaded is actually an advantage, then you're home free. And you do that a few times, and it becomes easier and easier and more natural. So I don't know, it must be 60 years, 50 years. We'll say, since I reframed something because it doesn't occur to me as negative.
- [41:37]
Maya Bialik
In the first place, can you give us an example?
- [41:40]
Dr. Ellen Langer
I ask you, do you want to meet my friend Joe? He's very impulsive. Why would you want to meet Joe? Right? Or I say to you, do you want to meet my friend Joe? He's very spontaneous. Yeah, I want to meet Joe. Well, spontaneous and impulsive are the same thing, but they lead you in very different places. In fact, this is another important piece for me. Every single negative ascription, negative thing we say about ourselves or somebody else has an equally strong but oppositely valence alternative. In English. For every bad, there's a good. For every good, there's a bad. And so the next time you call yourself or somebody else, let me give you I. I am so gullible, it defies belief. I am. I really am. I'm also impulsive. Now, if I want to stop being gullible, and you're going to help me stop at your point. Look at Ellen. You were taken by two psychopaths. I. My God. I know. That's why I want you to. I'm never going to change. Why? Because going forward, I'm not being gullible. Going forward, I'm Being trusting. And as long as I value being trusting, there are times I'm going to be gullible. I value being spontaneous, which is why at times I'm going the same, impulsive. So the point is, every time you call yourself, oh, how could I have done this? Or look at how you know what a monster you are, and you find the positive understanding of why that person did it, you typically don't even want to change them anymore. But if you want to change somebody's behavior, you have to change the behavior from the perspective of the actor. You have to get me not to value being spontaneous, not to value being trusting, but it's very powerful. And what happens is it changes your relationship to yourself and it changes your relationships with other people. All of that then makes you more mindful and, you know, improves your health.
- [43:42]
Jonathan Cohen
When you talk about expectation and removing your expectation from something happening, like, well, the podcast, my computer shuts off. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this podcast. I'm going to go have lunch.
- [43:53]
Dr. Ellen Langer
It wouldn't be, maybe I shouldn't be doing the podcast. It'd be, oh, well, you know, since I can't do it right at this moment, let me do something else. Yeah.
- [44:03]
Jonathan Cohen
There is an element of spirituality that seems embedded in some of this thinking because there is a trust that things are going to work out generally okay, or as they should. Do you assign any sort of relationship or trust or faith in how you're describing changing our expectations?
- [44:23]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Once you recognize that nothing is anything independent of the way we label it and that the culture gives us these labels, we don't have to accept these labels. You know, so an example, at a student years ago, we changed the label from victim to survivor. Very different, right? But it's just one word. Our language is loaded. It leads us to have many more expectations than we presume. You know, you're told when you're young, we used to. Now, cancer has been, many people survive, but in the old days, a few decades ago, they didn't. And so you were taught, cancer is a killer. So you're a young person, who cares. Cancer is a killer. So you learn cancer is a killer. And then eventually someone in your family, your parent, or you yourself get cancer. It doesn't even occur to you to question that, just as you have found it so hard to question that you might be able to heal instantly. You know, the inside out version of that. You know, I, I'm not sure just what people mean when they say spiritual, but it's hard for me to imagine being mindlessly spiritual. I mean, you know, you can be mindless and somebody else can call you spiritual, but for you to experience being spirited, just, you know, spiritual, you have to be present. And the only way to be present is to be mindful, which is to take the world as probably to realize the control we have, the way we label things. We shouldn't label things. Absolutely. You know that you. If you. If you take a label and you're. Again, you're young and you say, oh, old means loss of memory, decrepit, you know, going upon in so many ways, then eventually you wear that label. It's hard then to say, oh, no, no, I didn't really mean all of that. Everything we learn should be done as a probability rather than an absolute fact. And as I look at the two of you, physically, you're very different. And so when I give these lectures in person, I'll often ask. And there's always. It's amazing. I'll say, is there somebody very tall in the audience? And there's always a man at least six five. So he. I invite him up to the stage, and there I am at 5:3, and he's at 6:5. Okay, so we look silly together. And then I simply raise the question, should we do anything similar, physical, the same way? It seems crazy. I asked him to put his hand up. His hand is 3 inches or more larger than mine. Should we hold a tennis racket the same? All right, now, so the point here is that the more different you are from the person who wrote the rule, the more important it is for you not to mindlessly follow the rule. And so if I'm 5 3, and my hand is as large as it is, and you're teaching me tennis, and you say, here's how you hold the tennis rack. Well, maybe I take it as, you know, as a suggestion. Not absolutely.
- [47:32]
Jonathan Cohen
Talk to us about how pervasive our world is that is based on these assumptions.
- [47:38]
Dr. Ellen Langer
It couldn't be more pervasive. No, I'm suggesting that's how we came up with. I said before, virtually all of us are mindless almost all the time. Your parents teach you. This is how you do this in schools. You're taught. This is the one I use that I find compelling. I ask, how much is one plus one? This is the absolute that everybody is sure of. They say two. I said, but it's not always two. First of all, if we want to be sophisticated, one plus one is two. If you're using a base ten number system. If you're using a base Two number system. One plus one is written as ten. Who cares about number systems? You add one pile of laundry to one pile of laundry. One plus one is one. You add one wad of chewing gum to one wad of chewing gum. One plus one is. You add one cloud to one cloud. One plus one is one. In the real world, one plus one doesn't equal two as or more often as it does now. What's the difference? So before somebody asks you how much is one plus one? You say two. That's the end of it. Not only that, but you probably disparage the person for asking such a silly question. Now you're asked. All of a sudden you have a choice. When you're mindless, you have no choice. I could say one, I could say two, I could say 10. And you pay attention to the context and decide what you're going to do, and life becomes more engaging and interesting.
- [48:58]
Jonathan Cohen
I love that example because two people together can do things that, you know, maybe five people can't if their dynamic is right. But talk to us about glasses. This example struck me because I have a personal relationship with glasses. I got glasses at a very young age, but I've never really believed that I need glasses all the time. And we're all under the fallacy of glasses.
- [49:23]
Dr. Ellen Langer
People assume with almost everything that they look for stability. So if you go to the doctor and you're given this knowing eye chest.
- [49:32]
Jonathan Cohen
And this is that chart with all the descending letters in size and what.
- [49:36]
Dr. Ellen Langer
You'Re shown on those charts, the letters that are out of context, they make no sense, which is very different from if they did make sense. They're in black and white, not in color. I don't know about you, but if I'm hungry, I can see that restaurant sign, you know, much further in the distance. So our motivations and our abilities change in the course of a day. But the medical world can't evaluate us every hour of every day. And so what we do is we're given a number and we hold that constant. Well, let me tell you a story that led to some of this. You know, I used to have a contact lens that I wore in one eye, so I would have near, you know, be able to read with one eye and distance with the other. And one day I come back from work and I'm getting ready for bed, and I go to take the lens out of my. I can't get it out, and I'm killing myself. And then I realized, though I never put it in, and then I. The next thing I realized was that I was fine all day, you know, and I never wore them again. All right, so what is the point? The point is that if we allow it, our vision will vary. It'll vary based on how much sleep we've had, the time of day. You know, if you notice when you can't see and you say it's 3 o' clock in the afternoon, well, maybe you just need an energy bar, which we used to call a candy bar, but now you can eat it guilt free because it's an energy bar or a nap or something. You have choices that you don't once. You assume it's because there's something wrong with your vision. So the point is, if you go to the doctor and you find out you need glasses, then you, it's like the laxative. You wear the glasses every day, all day long. You're training your eyes not to be able to see. Now remember, in the counterclockwise study, well, these are elderly men and in that time of less than a week, their vision improved. You know, so that what I suggest, and there, there are many studies where we do this, that I talk about in the books, is sort of a psychological treatment for chronic illness is what I call attention to symptom variability. Whatever we have doesn't stay constant. Whatever aches and pains, they vary. Variability may be small, but it still varies. The question is why? Why now? Am I a little better than the last time? And so if you do this with vision, why now can I see, but at 4 o' clock I can see? Then you entertain possible reasons and you test them out. And so we find that across a host of very serious illnesses from Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, a bunch of diseases of this sort that we're able to get on top of, control, ameliorate the symptoms simply by asking the question, how is it now? Is it better or worse than the last time I checked in, and why? And when you ask that why question, you're being mindful, which is itself good for our health. So we call people at different times of the day and we ask them this question, how is it now? Is it better or worse than before? And why? But people can do that for themselves. Just set your, you know, your smartphone to ring, ring in an hour, then ring in an hour and 40 minutes, or two hours and six minutes, it doesn't matter, just keep burying it. Which is what people do. They have a chronic illness, they assume the symptoms will stay the same or only get worse.
- [53:10]
Jonathan Cohen
Do you start to find Patterns in the why that reflect stress or emotional conditions.
- [53:16]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, whatever it is. By asking the question, you're more likely to come up with an answer than if you don't. So let's say you're stressed and you think you're stressed all the time. No one is stressed all the time, to equal measure. So now I'm going to call you periodically and ask you, how are you now, and is it better or worse than the last time I called and why? You might discover, you know, you're okay most of the day, but when you talk to Ellen Langer, it's terrible. In which case the cure is easy. Don't talk to me, all right? You know, so it's harmless, you know, and it's a way that we've helped people with very serious illnesses just by reversing what we almost always do, which is hold things still. Horses don't eat meat. One and one is two. This is whatever it is, as if things are not naturally changing.
- [54:10]
Jonathan Cohen
The spiritual language for something very similar is to hold the possibility of something more, to hold the possibility that it could be different than the way we.
- [54:18]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Think it is, that the way we think it is is not the way it is. And if we think differently about it, it becomes different.
- [54:27]
Jonathan Cohen
You talk about something that I really related to that people set themselves up with the language they use all the time, with the notion of trying.
- [54:36]
Dr. Ellen Langer
I'm very sensitive to language, and so I find, you know, I have a lot chapter in the book Fun Chapter where I call better than better. And we have lots of people and lots of my colleagues do wonderful research to get us from here, which is bad to hear, which is good. And I say, aha, but there's a better place to be. And the trying is one example, the word try. You don't try to eat an ice cream cone. You eat the ice cream cone. So the word try has built into it an expectation for failure. And so giving up is not good. So trying is better than giving up, but better than trying is just doing. When we did that study then on my students, informal, that's the Yoda study. And I said, good, maybe more people will pay attention to it. The one I found the most fun was I had been asked many years ago if I'd give a sermon at one of the Harvard churches. And I said yes, because I say yes to everything, almost. But I'm Jewish and I'm not religious. So now that I've said, yeah, what am I going to talk about? So, all right, I think, well, I could Talk about forgiveness. It's not religion, but it's. It's religion. I could get away with it. And so I start to think about it and realize something sacrilegious. So if you ask 10 people, is forgiveness good or bad, what are they going to tell you? It's good. It's good, right? If you ask 10 people, is blame good or bad, what are they going to tell you? It's bad. Right. But you can't forgive unless you first blame. Well, that's interesting. Our forgivers are our blamers. Now, do you blame people for good things or bad things? Well, you blame people for bad things, but things in and of themselves are neither good nor bad. So what do we have here? We have people who see the world negatively, who blame and then forgive heartily. Divine. Now, if you blame, it's better to forgive than not forgive. But there's a better than better way, which is what I was describing before, which is to understand that other people's behavior makes sense from their perspective when they do it, or else they wouldn't do it. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, today I'm going to be obnoxious, aggressive, nasty and incompetent. Whenever we're calling somebody again, there's a positive version of that. And so you might want to forgive me for having been gullible. It's unnecessary once you realize it's, you know, that what I am is trusting and I don't have to forgive you for being inconsistent. Rather, I prefer to value you for being so flexible. So everything changes. So forgiveness is good if you blame, but if you understand that obviates the need for forgiveness. And it's the same thing with health, that we have people who are told that they're in remission. Now, of course, being in remission with cancer is better than having an active case of cancer. But why do they call it remission? You know, if you have a cold and the cold is gone, are you in remission?
- [57:54]
Maya Bialik
If we're talking about the nomenclature of what the word remission means, it means that you are under more acute monitoring than if you did not have cancer. And then if you were part of the general population. And it means that, yes, they're going to check cancer markers, which in many cases can indicate that you have a tumor that's growing that is going to kill you. Like, I mean, that's just the clinical explanation of what remission tends to mean.
- [58:19]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Not that many decades ago, the medical model was such that they believed that psychology was irrelevant to one's Health. The only way you were going to get sick was the introduction of an antigen. So you tell somebody that they're in remission again, well, that's better than having the act of cancer. But now I'm still a nervous wreck. Is it going to come back or not come back? And so the point is that you can just as easily see yourself as cured. And if you see yourself as cured, you go about your living rather than suffer the stress of worrying about the cancer. Now, if, let's say you're cancer free and you get cancer again, in some ways it'll be like the last cancer because we call it cancer. But in just as many ways it'll be different from that which allows us to see them as different. Same thing with a cold. You know, when you're cured from the cold, probably on some level, there's still some remnant, but you don't see yourself as in remission. And then when you get another cold, it doesn't scare you as much as I've beaten hundreds of these or tens of these.
- [59:24]
Maya Bialik
Can you actually talk a little bit about the common cold? You know, that's one of the things that many people would assume. This is cut and dry. You get exposed to a virus, you get a cold, and then you. The virus works through, you know, whatever process it needs to. And when the virus is dead, you do not have a cold anymore.
- [59:42]
Dr. Ellen Langer
When people, you know, think they're going to get a cold because we lead them to believe they're going to get a cold, they're more likely to get a cold. Cold. When they don't believe that they're going to get a cold. And, you know, the research needs to be replicated, but it takes so long to get permissions and to get these things done. And it was during COVID and so on. Let's just leave it at. There's no reason to assume with the wide body of disorders, diseases, infirmities that we have studied, that the common cold would be any different. It's interesting because this goes back to what you were implying before about what can't be. You know, that everybody accepts the word placebo. Everybody knows that placebos are effective. Now. Placebo is a nothing. You take a nothing pill, sugar pill, and you think it's something, and then it heals you. When you have a cold and you take something that you think is going to heal you, you organize yourself differently, you know, and in part of that, all of that helps the healing.
- [60:52]
Maya Bialik
The way that Jonathan functions, even when he's sick, he just keeps Saying, I'm not sick, I'm not sick. He's just kind of grumpy and has all the symptoms of sickness, but he won't call it sick. So it's like he was never sick.
- [61:05]
Dr. Ellen Langer
But there's some other part of this that we have to pay attention. Sometimes it's fun having a cold. You get to stay in bed, watch television, eat muffins, have somebody take care of you, you know, if you're fortunate. And so we don't always want to be as well as we think we would like us to want to be.
- [61:25]
Maya Bialik
Well, Jonathan doesn't like anyone taking care of him, so that tracks.
- [61:28]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Here's the limit question you were asking yourself before. My guess is you feel a cold coming on. At that point, you probably can, you know, take a right or left turn and prevent that from happening. Once it's full blown, it's harder to do that because we all have a very strong image of what it's supposed to be like. Either our throat will hurt, we'll cough, our nose will be stuffy, you know, for a few days and so on.
- [61:57]
Maya Bialik
You know, having a global pandemic also introduced a lot of conversations about symptomatology and course and things like that. And, you know, for. For many people, especially people who did not support, let's say, vaccines or the vaccine schedule in this country in particular, many people said, I got it and I'm fine. And there were many, many people who got it and were not fine. And this whole conversation about preexisting conditions came about, and it's interesting, I got hit very, very hard by Covid. Very hard. And I'm a person who generally, I mean, I have a lot of medical stuff that I deal with. I have two children, one of whom is very physiologically similar to me. He got hit six similarly, very, very hard. And we had almost the same exact course. And my other child, who's more like his dad, was literally like, stop asking me, I'm fine. Let me go about my business. So there's also, I think, such a huge conversation, and I think Covid in many cases made a lot of people think that they were authorities on medical health. And in many cases, even our government, I think, has admitted they were not the exact authorities.
- [63:04]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, no. And, you know, as far as who's going to get hit by what, you know, or not, there's so many potential explanations. But I do feel that if we took these people randomly, put them into two groups, taught one of them to be mindful, and they were mindful in the way I've described it, that they would be less vulnerable.
- [63:29]
Maya Bialik
Can you talk a little bit more about placebo? Because I, um. You go through some of the most incredible cases of what it means to apply placebo. Um, the sham surgery experiments regarding knee replacements is one category. But can you talk about both the knee surgery sham experiments and also the drilling the hole in your head Parkinson's experiment?
- [63:53]
Dr. Ellen Langer
They're remarkable for reasons that wouldn't occur to the normal reader. What's remarkable first to me was that they let them do this. You know how hard it is to get permission for even giving people a questionnaire. But so what happens in the Parkinson's study? People have Parkinson's are going to have surgery, and one group actually has the surgery, another group doesn't have the surgery, and yet another group is given a sham surgery where they actually drill.
- [64:22]
Maya Bialik
The surgery, presumably is going to help with their symptoms, correct?
- [64:26]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Oh, yes. Well, that's the reason to have it. Yeah. And so we have different expectations. Without the surgery, they shouldn't expect to get better with the surgery. They should. But one of these surgeries is a sham procedure they actually drill into your head. So this has to be real. Right. Because it kills. That surgery resulted, I think, in people getting better for at least two years. And two years was only because that was the last time they were, you know, they checked in on people. Now, you know, now when you. It's interesting because if you take a placebo, if you're better with a placebo and then somebody tells you it was only a placebo, you're one of two different reactions. One person, you know, oh, my God, I guess I didn't really get better. And then you fall back into whatever the problem was, or if somebody helps you, if you can't do it for yourself, to say, look, you know, if the placebo, if the pill, the surgery, the injection wasn't what helped you, what helped you, you know, you did it yourself. And to realize that all of us are able to give ourselves so much better health care than we think to do.
- [65:39]
Maya Bialik
And in many cases, I mean, I've heard a lot of people say they don't want to have knee surgery because of this sham experiment. And the. The knee surgery experiment was they literally performed a fake knee surgery and people recovered. I believe it was statistically significant that they recovered at the same rate as people who had had an entire knee replacement.
- [66:01]
Dr. Ellen Langer
You look at the diagnosis, any diagnosis is just a probability. We can't be sure. You're not going to see. You have A certain number of people who are going to get better on their own. We have a certain number of people who, whatever it is, they have, they only have a small version of it, you know, your Covid, the big version versus, you know, many other people. Small version.
- [66:21]
Maya Bialik
We talked about this with HIV also that the distinctions for what determines h like legitimate HIV positive status, especially when we're talking about babies and adoption rules across countries. So one country might say this is a baby that we cannot put out for adoption because it's HIV positive. And another country would say we would not even designate this child as HIV positive.
- [66:43]
Dr. Ellen Langer
And you know that once you're wearing a diagnosis, you behave very differently. Right. So this is one of the first questions you asked me. I mean, somebody you know is told they have cancer, they withdraw from the world, they feel sorry for themselves, and rightly so. Perhaps people stay away because they don't feel comfortable being, you know, they know cancer isn't catching. But what do you say after you say I'm sorry, you've got it. So their social interactions are reduced. They voluntarily withdraw from lots of the activities that the other way. All of those things that are good for us, you know. So if you believe that for whatever reason that you're going to be okay, then you're not doing those very things that take away from your being okay.
- [67:34]
Maya Bialik
There is a story of a man. You talk about it in the book. I'm just going to go ahead and read this. He had orange sized tumors. These are very, very large tumors. He was given two weeks to live and they gave him an. An experimental drug. Can you tell us what happened to this man twice?
- [67:50]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah. So the, the tumor goes away and then he reads that the drug was actually a placebo. So then the tumor comes back.
- [67:59]
Maya Bialik
We had a guy who was told he had two weeks to live. He was given what he was told was an experimental drug. This tumor, which by all accounts should not have vanished. Vanished. He was then told it became clear to him that he had been given a placebo. And what happened? The tumor came back. Right. So that's already amazing. They then gave him what they called a double strength medication. They said, we have a new experimental medication. It's double strength. It has the possibility to heal you. And what happened? The tumors shrunk again. He then found out there was a final report saying that the drug that he was given was essentially worthless. He died shortly thereafter.
- [68:45]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Yeah, yeah. Now I think that if we go back to what I've said about mind body unity, you know that wherever the mind is, the body will be. And if you assume this thing is going to kill me, both, you know, in a social, psychological way, as I said a moment before, you're doing things that will hasten your own death and also that the body is getting its messages from the mind. You know, there was this mental institution and one ward on the institution recalled the hopeless ward, and they were doing some renovations. So they moved everybody from the hopeless ward to a more hopeful ward and people got better. And then the renovations were finished. So now they are moved back to the hopeless one. And more people died than would have been expected by any metric. People tend to live until their granddaughter gets married, things of this sort, and magically die soon after that. For many of us, we don't die until we're ready to die. I mean, that's different. If you get hit by a car.
- [69:57]
Maya Bialik
Or shot by a bullet or something, those are choices. I made the choice to walk in front of that bus.
- [70:02]
Dr. Ellen Langer
That's right. But I mean, the larger point shouldn't get, shouldn't get lost in all of this, that we have enormous control over our health and well being and most people now are exercising only a small percentage of that. And we need to wake up and enjoy the lives that we're living.
- [70:28]
Maya Bialik
Some of the most powerful examples that you give, painting warts with bright colors and telling patients that they'll vanish when the colors wear off actually leads to the warts going away. We've seen that asthmatics can improve after using inhalers that it turned out were drug free. 50% of colitis patients had less inflamed intestines after being given a placebo that they were told would help with inflammation. I know that it's not necessarily your line of research, but I'm, I'm sure you're aware, you know, there's a lot of doctors and thinkers who are talking about sort of the biological basis of manifestation and visualization and positive thinking and what I would often say is toxic positivity. But people like Joe Dispenza, people like Bruce Lipton, you know, they have, you know, careers built around what are the literally molecular and cellular properties of change that can happen when we manifest, when we believe, when we place ourselves in this sort of higher vibration state. What's your perspective on either the, the biological mechanisms that might be underlying what's going on here or the sort of ability that we have to sort of market this kind of thing as we can change your cells when we change your mind.
- [71:47]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Anything that happens on any level is simultaneously happening on every level. And so I don't know or the particular neuroscience, it doesn't matter. But to not to believe there is a simultaneous change to me doesn't make sense. For a while now, neuroscience has been the coin of the realm. Jeremy Gray and colleagues years ago did this study. I may get this a little cockeyed, but the essence should come through where he gives people research results from real study, and then another group is given research results, the same results, but with made up, ridiculous neuroscience data. And what happens is when there's neuroscience in it, people believe it. I think that that's part of the good thing about what Bruce and Joe are doing. Regardless of the ultimate veracity, that you give a little mechanism and people say, oh, that must be true, because now they can explain that.
- [72:55]
Jonathan Cohen
Because people need to be convinced outside of what they were previously taught is the only way that it can be. They need to like. It's like a little. They need an explanation.
- [73:06]
Dr. Ellen Langer
They think they do. But, you know, right now you and I are speaking. I'm in Massachusetts. Where are you?
- [73:12]
Jonathan Cohen
California.
- [73:13]
Maya Bialik
Los Angeles.
- [73:14]
Dr. Ellen Langer
California. So how can we be speaking and seeing each other? I don't have the Vegas notion. And my guess is if you start to talk to me about some of the, you know, technology, when push comes to shove, you don't really understand it either, but we just accept it. And people accept that placebos work without the vaguest notion. How can placebo work? But you hear often enough placebo, placebo, at some point you accept it as real. So what people are willing to accept or not accept is not, to my mind, tied very closely to scientific proof.
- [73:52]
Maya Bialik
Can you talk about the color of medications? This blew my mind.
- [73:57]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Antidepressants are what color? Yellow, because yellow is common. Antacids are white. You know that colors mean something. And there is a book where they have the color of football. So you're the visiting team and the walls where the members of the team are going to get ready for the game are painted pink. Pink is calming, you know, and the stuff is real. There's some data that if you are wearing red on a date, the person you're with is going to spend more money on you. Now, you know, obviously once you hear these things, you can make sure it doesn't work for you. Colors, smells, sounds, you know, remind us of things. And when we're reminded of something, then our minds take over and, you know, behave in somewhat predictable way.
- [74:49]
Maya Bialik
I mean, this has been so, so informative, so also very entertaining to hear all of these Examples and also the way that you frame it. The prevalent view that we operate under is, you know, what's known as this biopsychosocial model, you know, which implies that biological and psychological and social factors are all interacting as you sort of send us off. Is that enough or is the way that you are framing things even more possible for a deeper understanding of mind and body?
- [75:24]
Dr. Ellen Langer
I have been talking about mind body unity since 1979, thinking about it before then, but in 1979 when I did the counterclockwise study, it's nice to feel that, you know, one has had some, some effect. And so the mind body dualism became mind body connection. But mind body connection still doesn't answer the problem, which is how do you get from the mind to the body? This is something where it's all or nothing. You know, that mind body connection is no different in my mind from mind body dualism. And what we need to, at least for heuristic purposes, to see them as one thing and then see how far we can push it. And then that allows an answer to many of the good questions you asked. I don't know what the limits are to so much of this. You know, I can easily create a situation where a person will be less likely to be tired on very little sleep, but does that mean they can go a lifetime without any sleep?
- [76:26]
Maya Bialik
You know, we thank you so much for being here and highly recommend the mindful body thinking our way to chronic health. I actually heard about you from my ex husband, so I'm giving a shout out to him for, for telling me all about you. And we're so grateful we finally got to speak to you. Women like me stand on the shoulders of women like you. So thank you so much for all of your, your pioneering work. Absolutely. Such a pleasure.
- [76:47]
Dr. Ellen Langer
Thank you for having me and for making this fun for me.
- [76:53]
Maya Bialik
She has a style of speaking that's very similar to what it's like to try and like speak at, you know, any meal that my family has ever had. So like I, I get it, but I think that a lot of what I have a problem, and it's a lowercase p problem with Dr. Langer is a lot of this is semantic. And that's exactly, it's exactly her point. So for me, the word spontaneous and impulsive are actually not the same word.
- [77:17]
Jonathan Cohen
Oh, you like to define a word?
- [77:19]
Maya Bialik
No, they don't mean the same thing because impulsive has a, a derogatory flavor. And that's because we speak as humans and we come up with words One of them means spontaneous. I'm up for anything. Impulsive means that you do not give thought to what happens after you do an action. And sometimes those actions have negative consequences that you have not considered. That's what impulsivity is, and we can measure it with neuroscience. So there is something to the difference between those things. But I love this notion, and it's actually something that you find through a lot of 12 step groups. Finding the asset that is hidden in a defect. Right. So that when you look at someone, and especially if you're having trouble in a relationship, this is strongly recommended. Whatever you focus on will grow. Whatever you focus on will grow. If you focus on the negative, it will be louder. If you focus on the positive, it will also be louder. That's sort of that notion that I absolutely relate to.
- [78:17]
Jonathan Cohen
You said negative implications or impacts after you do something. What the impulsive person doesn't consider is the potential impacts before they do something. So you. You just switched it. So I wanted to help us clarify. However there is in spontaneity, there is often, if you're really spontaneous, there can be a little bit of overlap between impulsivity.
- [78:41]
Maya Bialik
Yeah. It's the line between madness and creativity. You love to live there.
- [78:46]
Jonathan Cohen
I loved what she talked about in terms of noticing three new things about someone who you may live with or be in a relationship with. That's really cool because we all end up being like, I know this person. I know what they do. They start to talk. I know what they're gonna say already. Why do I have to listen to them?
- [79:06]
Maya Bialik
Well, I also was thinking, like, is that part of the definition of love is finding new things about your partner, especially over time. Right. Like when you think about it, especially if you're with someone over the course of time and you start to see them aging and you start to see new parts of them or new wrinkles or new things like, can you find beauty Right. In new things that you notice? Especially when you're with someone long enough for those things to kind of start shifting.
- [79:34]
Jonathan Cohen
What is love but the application of attention?
- [79:38]
Maya Bialik
What is love but a secondhand emotion?
- [79:40]
Jonathan Cohen
I thought of two things that kept with me during this episode when she talked about the idea of noticing and the need to continually notice. Notice three things when you go outside. Notice three things at the grocery store are the devices that we're carrying in our hands destroying our ability to notice. Not. Not just that I'm spending my time. My time on the device so I'm not looking around, but the fact that I'm being rewarded by going on the phone and getting this novelty reduces my interest in seeking the novelty elsewhere, programming me to think about what the world is. And then I take those expectations into my real life.
- [80:25]
Maya Bialik
That's very, very astute. You know, she actually has a scale that she devised. It's called the, I think the Langer Mindfulness Scale. You know, I was reading some of the characteristics and like in many cases, like I am not, I don't fall under the category of mindful people because. Oh, you, you just shook your head with tremendous certainty. Like this was written in your soul. Like when I was born, I knew that before I even knew you. But no, one of the things is like, are you open to new ideas and creativity? Like, nope, nope.
- [80:57]
Jonathan Cohen
You like to know how things are go and you want a level of certainty that this leads to that.
- [81:03]
Maya Bialik
I mean, this is the other thing. Like in order to do certain things in life, like someone has to feed the kids and like have gas in the car and like put on your underwear.
- [81:12]
Jonathan Cohen
You know, like, you don't want. The three year old mindset is what she describes where you're like questioning everything. You shouldn't do that with. I wonder if I don't fill the gas tank if the car will still go like that. There are some things we know.
- [81:27]
Maya Bialik
And that's what I was talking about, you know, in terms of a floor effect. Like there is a, what's called a floor effect of certain things. Meaning, you know, if I cut my hand open the, the cells of epidermis. Yes. I could be the person who like magically heals.
- [81:44]
Jonathan Cohen
Yeah.
- [81:44]
Maya Bialik
And it just magically closes up. But generally speaking, there's a floor effect to how long a bone will take to no longer have a fracture in the calcium structure. You know what I mean? Like, it's not just like we were.
- [81:58]
Jonathan Cohen
Talking to a 21 year old who had broken their collarbone and he said I healed like a middle aged diabetic. For some reason that bone didn't fuse properly. And I wonder what are the factors that an otherwise healthy, vibrant person would heal.
- [82:13]
Maya Bialik
That could also have been a wrong assessment. They could have been looking at the wrong scan. And now you've got this 21 year old kid who thinks my bones don't heal and maybe I shouldn't do this because what if I break this? And if I break this, what do I do? I think about this with labor, with birth, how much this comes up. I was told after the birth of my first son by an ob, your body probably just doesn't know how to go into labor. Some women, their bodies just don't know how to go into labor. And I'm thinking that doesn't even make sense. What, Like I'm the one who was supposed to die in the jungle because I would never give birth and the baby would just, like, what? That doesn't make sense. So with my second son, when I went into labor and was alone until I pushed him out, I called the doctor and I said, guess whose body knows how to go into labor? But. But that's in your head, right? It gets in your head and then that's the story you tell and how many women are told, this is going to be your story. Or even with hormones, this is going to be your story.
- [83:06]
Jonathan Cohen
There's also something, while there can be a floor, like, you likely aren't going to have spontaneous healing. Although the thing that got me into energy work was a spontaneous burn healing of my fingers, which was a crazy experience. You can also change, like, does that cut leave a scar? Does it heal in 3 days vs 7 days? Does it linger?
- [83:30]
Maya Bialik
And I don't know that I would say you can change that.
- [83:33]
Jonathan Cohen
You can influence it. We're going to continue this on substack because there is actually so much to talk about in this outro. The thing, the second thing that occurred to me while she was talking and I don't think you're going to like this is.
- [83:46]
Dr. Ellen Langer
But.
- [83:47]
Jonathan Cohen
But it has implications not only to the group that I'm about to mention, but to everyone who gets a diagnosis. There's a slippery slope here because in some ways we need to be honest and recognize when we have something we need to work on. But at the same time, when we label ourselves, there's no getting out of that label. It's people in 12 step rooms who say, I am this.
- [84:12]
Maya Bialik
Oh, that's interesting.
- [84:13]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm a drug addict, I'm an alcoholic, I'm a codependent. I'm a. Some sort of addicted to something.
- [84:20]
Maya Bialik
I would use the example of, of alcoholism in particular for people who are in aa. This is actually, and I think Moshe Kasher may have talked about this when we had him on our podcast. One of the criticisms that many people have is this notion that once you are labeled an alcoholic, that you cannot drink alcohol and that total abstinence is the only, quote, cure. So, yes, there are some people, but I think that's a, it's a, it's a shade different. But I think this notion, I think the notion is very interesting, but it is a shade different from, I think, Dr. Langer's work.
- [84:50]
Jonathan Cohen
And I want to clarify. I'm not encouraging people to drink or say that you can't.
- [84:54]
Maya Bialik
You are. You're encouraging people to drink and not believe in alcoholism.
- [84:59]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm not. What I'm saying is that the labeling of I am this versus I'm recovering or I am, you know, I'm changed my relationship with something like the. Some of the language that we use to then identify ourselves. I think there's this line between identifying a problem so that you can manage it in your life and get help and becoming this patient for life mentality.
- [85:25]
Maya Bialik
Look, I think we see it even outside of 12 step, you know, conversations. We see it in the rampant diagnosis and self diagnosis of things like adhd, ocd, right? To say I have ocd, I'm so ocd. There are many, many things about people that are persnickety that are what we used to call anal retentive. Does that mean you merit an entire diagnosis that then is the label that you hashtag? Not necessarily. And when we get to medication conversations, especially with children, when do you medicate a child who has attention deficit problems versus this is a clinical issue and this child needs to be medicated all day versus there are certain situations that when this child is placed in, this is how they behave, but they focus perfectly well when blah, blah, blah. And I think that's true for many of these diagnosis, even spectrum stuff, anxiety. When do you say, especially with children, you deserve a medication so that you are not suffering like this or what's going on in the world around you that is producing this diagnosis? Is it who you are? Is it situational? And once we put that label on them, right, and we've talked about this, even with labeling, you know, with the spectrum. If you tell a child you are autistic, right. That's different than letting this child sort of evolve and for them to learn. Obviously there's certain children for whom that label is very helpful, but that label itself can be, you know, complicated.
- [86:55]
Jonathan Cohen
Very well said. Head over to Substack Mind Bialix Breakdown on Substack to join the Breaker community. On this particular episode, you're going to get more of understanding yourself through diagnosis and the challenges and labels that those carry. I'm also going to ask Mime a very personal question. When Dr. Langer was talking about changing beliefs and expectations, things not being good or bad, and changing the narratives that we have and that we carry all the time, what I what came up for me was how does that relate when people are not doing things the way you want them to. How does it relate when you're in a situation that you you don't like and you think it should be done differently? How does it relate when almost every thought we think if you start to unpack, it has an expectation associated with it that is impacting us physiologically? We're going to do a deep dive into the narratives we carry and how we can actually start breaking free to see things differently and to feel differently. Mind B Alex Breakdown on Substack and.
- [87:56]
Maya Bialik
From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.
- [87:59]
Jonathan Cohen
It's Maya Bialik's breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you.
- [88:03]
Dr. Ellen Langer
She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.
- [88:14]
Jonathan Cohen
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Dr. Ellen Langer
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Jonathan Cohen
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