Thinking of Mind, Body, One

We conclude this series with insights and excerpts from the article Our Perception of Time Changes How We Heal in this final posting.  

In The Perception of Time Influences Healing Independent of Actual Time we learned that abstract psychological precepts, such as those that guide how we perceive the passage of time, can significantly impact physical health outcomes. 

In The Effect of Mind On the Body we learned that something as vague as a thought can influence the physical world and that our bodies incorporate multiple systems that encompass both body and mind, changing as a whole. And we considered the effect that a “third partner” plays. This installment concludes the reporting on this article.

We are accustomed to thinking of the body and mind as separate components. What does it mean to think of body and mind as a single unit?

“When the mind and body constitute a single system, any change in a person simultaneously creates change at the level of thought (i.e., cognitive change) and at the level of the body (hormonal, neural, and/or behavioral change). When we open our minds to the idea of body-mind unity, new possibilities for controlling our health become available and tangible.”

A Change in Perspective Results in Change

These researchers conducted additional experiments. “The next study was conducted in 2007 with hotel maids. We asked them how much exercise they did. Although they worked physically throughout their workday, they didn’t perceive this work as exercise. This is because they thought, according to common belief, that exercise is something done after work hours. But by that time of day, they were too tired.”

“In that study, we randomly divided the 84 participants into two groups. In the experimental group, we simply explained that their work was actually physical exercise. We showed them, for example, that changing bed sheets was equivalent to working out on a specific gym machine.” Participants in the control group did not receive similar guidance.

“So we had two groups: one where participants believed that their work was exercise, and the other where participants didn’t understand this. We measured them on various parameters and found that during the month of the study, they didn’t make significant changes to their eating habits or work harder.

“Nonetheless, participants in the experimental group lost weight, their blood pressure dropped, their body mass index (BMI) improved, and there was also an improvement in their waist-to-hip ratio. All of this happened just due to a change in mindset.”

In the control group, however, the changes were random and sometimes even negative.

A Change in Time Perspective Results in Body Changes Beyond Conscious Control

Starting in 2016, a series of studies by these researchers examined a particular aspect of the body-mind unity theory. These studies focused on how time perception affects the speed of physiological processes in our cells.

The first study in this field involved 47 patients with Type 2 diabetes. To familiarize themselves with the routine changes in their blood sugar levels, participants were asked to track these levels throughout the day for the week preceding the actual experiment.

Participants arrived at the lab in the morning after an overnight fast and soon had to part with their phones, watches, and any other items that could reveal the real time. For an hour and a half, they played computer games with a clock beside the computer. To ensure they were aware of the passing time on the clock, the researchers asked them to switch computer games every 15 minutes.

Participants were divided into three groups. One group was shown a regular clock indicating that the experiment lasted 90 minutes. The second group saw a clock moving at twice the normal speed, making them think 180 minutes had passed. The third group saw a clock moving at half the normal speed, making them think only 45 minutes had passed.

Among those who experienced the fast time, meaning 180 minutes passed for them, the reduction in blood sugar levels was the highest at 23.5  milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). For those who experienced the real time of 90 minutes, the average reduction was 15.1 mg/dL, and for the slow-time group, who thought only 45 minutes had passed, the average reduction was the lowest at 9.8 mg/dL.

“The question we asked was whether there is a correlation between blood sugar levels and the actual time that passed or the time as perceived by the participants according to the clock,“ Langer said. ”We saw that it was the participant’s perception of time, not the actual time, that controlled the blood sugar levels.”

Belief Results in Change

A follow-up study in 2020 was conducted in a sleep lab. Sixteen participants slept in the lab for two nights. On the first night, they were allowed to sleep for eight hours, and on the second night, only for five hours. They were randomly divided into two groups.

Participants in the first group believed they slept eight hours both nights, meaning the researchers misled them about the second night’s sleep duration. Participants in the second group thought they slept only five hours on both nights, meaning the researchers misled them about the first night.

“We found that when people perceived that they had slept only 5 hours, having actually received 8 hours time in bed, their cognitive performance was significantly worse than those who slept 8 hours and were ‘informed’ that it was 8 hours,” the researchers summarized in the article. “Consistent with this finding, we also found that those who slept 5 hours but perceived that it was 8 hours performed significantly better than those who slept 5 hours and thought it was 5 hours.”

“Cognitive and behavioral performance matched the duration the participant believed they slept, not the actual sleep duration,” Langer said.

Researcher’s Perspectives

All our lives we think according to a dualistic view of mind and body, and it’s hard for us to grasp that they can be one entity—changes in the mind and body happening simultaneously rather than in sequence. Every thought involves changes occurring simultaneously throughout every part of the body.

In your experiments you see that when our expectations change, our bodies change along with them?

Yes, it’s all a matter of expectations. In a sense, our expectations control our daily interactions, but we don’t notice it. When you expect to see something, you see it. If you don’t expect to see it, you usually won’t see it.

In other words, if I expect my health to improve, for instance, I will notice it improving, and if I expect my health to deteriorate, I will mainly notice that? How does what I notice change my body?

The point is that expectations and physical changes occur simultaneously. We don’t yet have precise enough technology to capture these changes [and therefore it’s hard to explain how it happens], but we see it happening in studies.

Suppose you raise your hand—at that moment, changes occur in your brain and body simultaneously; they are one. If you habitually take medicine prescribed by a doctor, it means you believe this medicine will work. You’re ill, you take the medicine, and you get better. But if the medicine is just a sugar pill, a placebo, what causes your condition to improve? You yourself cause your condition to improve.

How do you do it? Through thought—it contributes to the change in your body that leads to improved health. If your condition improves by taking a sugar pill, it means your [thoughts] control your health.

If you don’t believe you can have control over your health, it means you don’t do anything intentionally to experience that control [and therefore find it hard to notice it]. If someone tells you that you can’t, and you believe you can’t, then no matter what happens, you won’t try to do anything.

The idea behind my series of studies on body-mind unity is to show that we have much more control over our health and well-being than people tend to think, only it’s very difficult to notice it.

When we describe a disease as something we can’t deal with, we actually label it incorrectly. All we know is that the ways we’ve tried to control the disease so far have failed. Instead of viewing our diseases as uncontrollable, it would be better if we could see them as “non-permanent.” We don’t know enough about them.

People are unaware of what I’m telling you and what the studies show because schools, newspapers, and even parents tell them absolute things. When you know something absolutely, when you’re certain of something, you don’t pay attention to it. But this certainty leads to mindlessness.

What do you mean by “mindfulness”?

Imagine you go to a doctor when you’re ill and ask how long it will take to heal. If the doctor tells you it will take six weeks, it will likely take much longer to recover compared to if they say two weeks. One reason is that when you believe you will heal soon, you start noticing the stages where you feel better. Mindfulness is actively noticing new things.

We conducted many studies on mindfulness (unrelated to time perception) where we invited people with chronic pain, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and more, asking them periodically about their symptoms—whether they improved or worsened compared to before and why. Several things happened when we did this.

First, when you notice that your condition sometimes improves and sometimes worsens, it helps you feel a bit better because previously you thought it either stayed the same or got worse and now you notice it sometimes improves. When you ask yourself why it’s better now, you engage in a mindful search, which in itself, without anything else, helps your health.

Second, if you believe there is a way to heal from the disease, you are more likely to find such a way. Third, when people have a chronic disease, for example, they often feel helpless and think there’s nothing they can do about it. They think the definition of chronic disease is that there’s nothing to be done.

But all chronic means is that the medical world hasn’t found a [management] solution yet. It doesn’t mean no [management] solution exists. So, when you’re in this whole process and remain mindful, you feel useful, that you are doing something, and this gives you a sense of control over your life.

The idea of “If you believe there’s a way to heal, you’re more likely to find such a way” isn’t very conventional.

There are so many things in the work I’ve done over the past 45 years that contradict almost everything commonly thought. People believe there are unchanging facts, but I think if people pay attention to themselves, they’ll remember that sometimes their cold lasts five days, sometimes a week, and sometimes just two days. Some people consistently recover faster. When asking why this is so, it leads to the same places our studies took us.

I’ll tell you something that might sound trivial, but I think it’s important. Life consists of different moments, and what’s needed is to treat these moments as important. Not to worry about what will happen in five years. Just treat things as changes and enjoy today.

Even if you receive a tough medical diagnosis, you can decide to feel depressed and miserable because you won’t live forever or, alternatively, try to live a full life as long as you’re alive. People spend a lot of time trying to increase the number of years in their life, but I think it’s more worthwhile for them to add life to the current years they have to live. According to our studies, this will help them stay healthy for a longer period.