Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee BITESIZE | The Power of Mindset: How Your Thoughts Transform Your Physical Health | Dr Ellen Langer #587
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Oct 16, 2025 
Dr. Ellen Langer, a Harvard professor known for her groundbreaking work on mindfulness, shares fascinating insights into how our thoughts impact physical health. She reveals her nursing home study where giving residents choices dramatically improved longevity. Ellen discusses her Counterclockwise project that rejuvenated elderly men by changing their mindset. Furthermore, she explores the powerful placebo and nocebo effects and demonstrates how believing work is exercise can lead to better health outcomes. A must-listen for anyone interested in the mind-body connection!
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Choice And A Plant Doubled Survival
- Ellen Langer describes a nursing-home study where residents given choices and a plant to care for had double the survival rate after 18 months.
- The intervention suggests small changes in agency produced large effects on longevity.
Mind And Body As One System
- Langer argues mind and body are one and should be treated as a unified system.
- Placing the mind somewhere necessarily places the body there too, dissolving the gap between thought and material change.
Retrofit Retreat Reversed Aging Signs
- In the Counterclockwise study older men lived in a retreat retrofitted to 20 years earlier and behaved like their younger selves.
- Within a week their vision, hearing, strength, memory, and appearance measurably improved.
