Dr. Ellen Langer: Using Your Mind to Control Your Physical Health & Longevity

In this episode, my guest is Dr. Ellen Langer, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Harvard University and the world’s leading researcher on the mind-body connection and the power our thinking has on our physical health. She explains how specific ways of framing and asking questions about the world shape our physical health and rate of aging. Dr. Langer also explains how our perception of time and control significantly impact our rate of physical healing, hormones, immune system, and longevity. She describes mindfulness as a way of framing life, not simply a meditation or other practice, and discusses data showing how to use one’s mind to overcome health challenges and achieve remarkable outcomes. Dr. Langer is a luminary and pioneer in researching the relationship between the mind and body with scientific rigor. Her work and our discussion are applicable to women and men of all ages and walks of life.

Articles

• Long-term effects of a control-relevant intervention with the institutionalized aged (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology)
• Mind-Set Matters: Exercise and the Placebo Effect (Psychological Science)
• Ageing as a mindset: a study protocol to rejuvenate older adults with a counterclockwise psychological intervention (BMJ Open)
• Manipulating sleep duration perception changes cognitive performance – An exploratory analysis (Journal of Psychosomatic Research)
• Physical healing as a function of perceived time (Scientific Reports)
• A patient by any other name . . . : Clinician group difference in labeling bias (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology)
• Believing Is Seeing: Using Mindlessness (Mindfully) to Improve Visual Acuity (Psychological Science)
• The borderline effect for diabetes: when no difference makes a difference (Frontiers in Psychology)
• Changes in the distributed temporal response properties of SI cortical neurons reflect improvements in performance on a temporally based tactile discrimination task (Journal of Neurophysiology)
• Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk (Econometrica)

Books

• "The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health"
• "The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire"
• "Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams"
• "Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility"
• "The Creative Act: A Way of Being"
• "Escape from Freedom"
• "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure"
• "The Anxious Generation"

Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned

• Guest Series | Dr. Matt Walker: The Biology of Sleep & Your Unique Sleep Needs
• Optimal Protocols for Studying & Learning

People Mentioned

• Alia Crum: Professor of Psychology, Stanford University
• René Descartes: French philosopher, mathematician
• Lee Ross: Professor of Psychology, Stanford University
• Roger Bannister: British neurologist, runner
• Torsten Wiesel: Swedish neurophysiologist, Nobel Laurate
• David Hubel: Canadian-American neurobiologist, Nobel Laurate