Amazing study that throws into question all we have been told about ourselves, our bodies, our health and our abilities to influence our reality.
Back in 1979, psychologist Dr Ellen Langar, then at Harvard University, and her colleagues devised an ingenious experiment to test the power of perceptions on the state of the physical body.
Langar and her team hypothesised that they could reverse the biological ageing of a group of men aged 75 and older. That’s right—they were seeking to reverse physiological ageing.
We determine our age by our birthday: you are 25, or 36, or 42 or 88. But another way to assess age is via physiological markers in the body and the cognitive function of the brain. Not all 56 year olds are in the same condition: some are physiologically older or younger than others who are their chronological age. So the intention of Langar and her team was to see if a person’s psychological perception of him or herself as old or young could directly influence the biological ageing process.
The experiment involved only men, who were taken to live together at a retreat centre for one week. Before being taken there, they were all thoroughly evaluated and tested for short-term memory, cognition, hearing, taste, sight, posture, perception and physical strength (which are many of the markers that help determine biological age, as opposed to chronological age). They also had their pictures taken.
The retreat centre was specially created to be a time capsule from 1959—everything in it, from the furniture to the appliances to the books and magazines to the music playing on the stereo, was indicative of 1959. The men were not allowed to take anything with them, such as recent family photos, personal papers, books etc., that would remind them of the current time (1979), so they were thoroughly immersed in a world 20 years in the past. They were also carefully counselled and coached to act as if it were 20 years earlier. They were to discuss their wives and families as if it were 1959, and pretend they were still working at the job or in the career of that year. The staff were very particular and paid attention to the tiniest detail. To all intents and purposes, these men were time-travelling back to a time when they were 20 years younger.
As any good study must be structured, there was also a control group of men who were housed in another part of the retreat centre. The centre looked modern and current (1979) and the men were told to simply enjoy themselves as if they were on holiday. They had no instructions about dates, year or time, so they were more or less just enjoying a week of retreat, with everything normal for 1979. As a control group, they would provide data about whether relaxing in a non-stressful atmosphere had any impact on the biological markers of ageing.
At the end of the week, all the men were tested once again for the markers of biological ageing, and their pictures were re-taken. The before and after pictures were shown to a group of independent ‘judges’ who were asked to compare the two photos and say in which one the man looked younger and to guess how many years younger he appeared to be. The judges did not know the reason they were being asked to compare the pictures, as they were unaware of the experimental set-up. This way they would be totally impartial. Almost unanimously, the impartial judges said the men in the post-retreat photos for the time-capsule group were younger—by an average of three years—than their pre-retreat photos. There was no difference for the non-time-capsule group.
The scientists then went on to do post-retreat physiological evaluations.
Amazingly, the bodies of the men who had been living as if it were 1959 actually grew younger!
For example;
- The lengths of the fingers, which tend to reduce or shrink with age, had increased, as had their hand grip strength.
- Their vision and hearing improved.
- Nearly half of this group of men experienced an increase in IQ.
As astounding as it seems, Dr Langar provided an opportunity for these men to be psychologically 20 years younger, and their bodies followed suit.
Their minds literally turned back their body clocks.
There were no such changes in biological markers for the men in the non-time-capsule group.
Once again we see the phenomenal power the mind has when we use it correctly!
