Dr. Ellen Langer

It drives me crazy.

As if adrenaline has a mind of its own.

Adrenaline, please come.

You know, I need you now.

it's all one thing.

My adrenaline, my biceps, my fingers, everything, it's all one thing working in a coordinated way to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.

When we get fooled into, in my view, mind-body dualism, then somehow it's my mind and my body, they're separate and I have to figure out how to

organize them, and we give up a lot of control.

Another very important example that's out there, not our research, is on the placebo.

Just everybody accepts that a placebo is effective.

I think it's our most effective medicine.

So what's going on?

You take this nothing, you think it's something, and then it acts like something.

In fact, the chambermaid study that we talked about is a nocebo, which most people don't understand that.

Nocebo is you do something, but you think it's nothing, and it wipes out the effect.

So they're getting the exercise, but they don't realize that it's exercise, and so it doesn't have the effect.

Okay, so we can bring it about.

We can make it disappear.

The control we have over our health and well-being is enormous.

You add that to what I was saying before about everything that is was at one time a decision, which means it's mutable.