Dr. Ellen Langer

Now, when you have a cold and the cold goes away, you don't see yourself as in remission.

See, it's gone.

And then if you get a cold, as soon as a brand new cold, and it can be the same thing for cancer.

In some way, the cancer is...

All cancer bears something in relationship to each other or else we wouldn't call it by the same name.

But each cancer, each moment is different.

So how important is language in our lives?

It's crucial because the way we use language, once we name something, we think we know it.

Once we think we know it, we don't pay attention to it anymore while it's changing.

i'm experiencing it yeah no it's what we do here with um if you have some disease you almost become the disease you and identify and it's very hard you know so i had a student a wonderful young woman who had ms and i heard you know somebody comes over and asked her how she is and she was great rather than you know oh my goodness for every question the ms is with her

And then she explained to the person how her mind is working, her arm, and went through all the parts of her that are just fine.

And that gave me a different idea that when you have a chronic illness, all the word chronic means is that the medical world doesn't yet know

how to help you.

It doesn't mean that there is no way to help yourself.

And so I don't have data to support this, but it seems to me a thought experiment that if you built up the rest of your body, made yourself strong, I can't imagine that wouldn't help the healing.

So I show a slide, I don't remember what I was talking about during COVID, but you imagine Olympic runners

versus a couch potato.

And let's assume both of them were exposed to COVID and both of them got COVID.

It seems to me the Olympic athlete would probably have an easier time with it.

And so you can build up the rest of your body.