The Mindful Body

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Hello everyone and welcome to ideas for
a better life. I am Eugenio Valla,

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ruiz, reader, hard- working
and lover of personal development. Today

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I want to share with you the
main ideas of the book Mindfull Body,

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written by psychologist Ellen Langer. Before
starting, as always, remind yourself that

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you have at your disposal a compilation
of the most relevant ideas and tips on

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personal development. In my four books
you already know them free, healthy and

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happy, thirty- one days to
improve your life, minimalism for normal people

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and seven steps for a purposeful life. You have them all on Amazon and

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I leave you the link to all
of them, to the four in the

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episode notes and let' s see
what the Enlanger tells us in his mindfull

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body book. This book deals with
how our mental state can directly influence our

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physical health. Even today, the
idea that mind and body are separate entities

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is deeply rooted in Western thought.
And this idea not only tells us the

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book that it is wrong, but
that many research suggests that it is frankly

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harmful. But since it is very
difficult to understand and explain how a diffuse

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immaterial thing called thought comes to impact
another material thing, which we call the

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body, the mainstream has inclined to
think that these two things are separate and

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not necessarily so. I know this
is changing. I know doctors increasingly understand

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this idea and I think it is
changing because more and more studies, more

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and more tests indicate that mind and
body are a whole. Then, the

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author of the book details us one
by one decades of studies that provide very

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clear evidence that our thoughts, our
beliefs, our perceptions, influence and,

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in addition, greatly influence our body, our physical state. I, in

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reading the book, have selected the
studies that have seemed most significant to me,

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but you will be able to find
many more if you read the book,

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of course, but let us go. I have selected the most significant

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ones and I hope you like them
and I hope they bring everything to you.

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Start this idea of mind and users
with research by scientist Asia Rolls that

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indicates that immune responses begin in our
brain. By inducing abdominal inflammation in mice,

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Rolls observed that brain- specific neurons
were activated. Well, other researchers

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were able to reproduce this inflammation by
directly activating these neurons. What this tells

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us is what this tells us or
what it demonstrates is the ability of certain

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mental processes to trigger physiological reactions that
are real, that exist, that can

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be proved, that can be seen, that can be touched. However,

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positive thinking can improve our physical health, which has been discussed so many times,

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because the author of the book wanted
to check it out and wanted to

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check it out by doing a study. His object was to see if the

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immersion of older men in an environment
that reminded them of their youth could even

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improve their health. So he took
the participants and divided them into two groups,

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Group A and Group B. The
first group, Group A, made

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a retreat, a journey designed to
reproduce life as it was twenty years or

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twenty years ago, and this included
watching TV shows of that time, reading

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news and newspapers of that time,
and so on. He also encouraged them

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to speak only in the present,
as if everything they were experiencing was happening

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right now. At the present time, that was group A. Then there

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was a group B. This second
group lived the same retreat, the same

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journey, but they had to talk
about their experiences in the past, not

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in the present as the group they
remember, but in the past. Well,

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surprisingly, both groups showed several improvements
in health markers, but the first

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group, the one that lived in
the counterclockwise direction, showed significant improvements in

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vision, flexibility and even cognitive function. Impressive. Then there was another similar

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experiment that took place in Italy approximately
ten years after this original experiment and also

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surprisingly, or less, the results
were repeated. But psychologists Alia Crum and

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Octavia Zar took this research a step
further. In their own study, they

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interviewed more than sixty- zero people
over the age of twenty- one and

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asked about their perceived level of physical
activity compared to that of their peers.

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I' m sure you can already
guess what happened. Indeed, the results

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showed a significant relationship between the perception
of individuals of their physical activity and their

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mortality rates. Those considered less active
than others had a higher risk of dying

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during the study period, regardless of
their actual levels of physical activity. I

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mean, if you think you'
re doing physical activity, you' re

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less likely to die than anyone who
thinks it' s below the physical activity

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their peers do. But this phenomenon
is not limited only to physical activity.

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Another study showed that it is the
perception of stress and not stress itself that

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affects our health. People who believe
that stress is harmful, those who claim

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to have extremely high levels of stress, have a shorter life expectancy than those

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who do not consider it harmful,
regardless of their actual stress levels, that

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is, if you think you are
stressed out, that will affect your health.

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If you' re stressed out,
you don' t think about it,

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you can probably get away with it. But the influence of perception also

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extends to other aspects of health.
For example, to the dream researchers of

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Harvard Medical School tells us the book
that studied this issue in depth. They

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did an experiment in which they manipulated
the participants' watches for what? For

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them to show wrong sleep hours.
Participants who thought they had slept eight hours,

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despite having slept only four or five
hours, obtained better results in cognitive

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tests than when they were aware of
having slept only five hours. Unbelievable,

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but this doesn' t end here. Those who slept eight hours but believed

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that they had slept five, got
worse results than when they thought they had

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slept eight, regardless of when they
had slept, this shows that perception of

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sleep duration has a much greater impact
on alert levels, on cognitive levels than

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the actual amount of sleep a person
has. Therefore, to God manias goodbye

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manias if I have slept little or
if I have not slept enough and the

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book gives us many more heris emplos. Participants in another study were asked to

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undergo a stress test on a treadmill
and were then randomly assigned to two groups,

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as they had previously done to those
who were going on a temporary retreat.

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Then Group A, the first of
the groups, was told that the

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evidence had shown that they were carriers
of a gene that made them prone to

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fatigue and this information in some was
obviously real and in others it was not.

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And the second group, Group B, was told absolutely nothing, either

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that they were prone or that they
were not. They weren' t told

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anything. Then, a week later, all the participants in this study went

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back to the stress test, went
back to the medical center, got back

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on the treadmill, and the results
of the study once again reveal the power

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of beliefs over genetic predisposition. The
individuals who were made to believe that they

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were carriers of that gene associated with
fatigue showed less resistance, a reduced lung

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function, a less efficient metabolic exchange
rate, which is what indicates your ability

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to eject carbon dioxide from the body
and that independently, they displaced that gene

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or. If not clear to you, you will ask what is happening here,

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because once again, the beliefs that
the individuals participating in the study on

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their own abilities had led to real
physical results. Again, so, as

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you see, all the tests,
all the studies that are narrating the book

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point to a unity between mind and
body. Instead of being separate, instead

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of being independent entities, our physical
health is radically affected by what is happening

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in our head and not only tells
us medical studies, scientific studies. Another

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way the book delves into this idea
is also by analyzing what has been called

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and sure you know the placebo effect. You know that the placebo effect or

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a placebo is basically a harmless treatment, a neutral treatment, a treatment that

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neither cures nor harms. So,
for example, when used in research,

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usually what is done is that a
group receives the actual medication and a second

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group receives the placebo. What'
s this for? For this is done

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to check if the actual medicine exceeds
the false treatment. Well, patients often

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experience higher cure rates when they believe
in the efficacy of a placebo, regardless

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of its form. And he also
gives us examples of studies in this section

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of the book. He tells us
of a study that shows that many patients

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stopped vomiting after taking a compound that
does exactly the opposite induce vomiting, but

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they were told that this compound would
relieve their symptoms fixed in the power that

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ours has. Mind, you'
re taking something that makes you throw up.

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They tell you it' s to
stop puking and stop puking. But

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there are more examples. He gives
us the example of people with viral sore

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throat who get better when they take
antibiotics. And, as we all know,

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antibiotics are ineffective against viruses in principle. More examples also tell us in

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the talk of studies that show that
the stimulating effects of caffeine only manifest when

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people are aware that they have consumed
it, that is, if they give

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you caffeine without you knowing in coffee, it will probably not take your sleep

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away or alter you, and the
placebo effect works even when there are invasive

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procedures. Simulated surgeries have proven to
be effective in some cases and the book

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also gives us several examples. A
very famous cardiologist named Leonard Cov, who

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presented a study on an operation basically
that a surgical intervention, which is carried

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out to relieve the chest pain suffered
by some patients, tells us in the

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1950s that his research showed that patients
who had undergone a false operation of this

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kind declared the same level of pain
relief as those who had undergone the actual

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surgery. And these researches have been
reproduced in all kinds of contexts, with

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all kinds of diseases, with all
kinds of patients, different ages, different

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regions of the world, different medical
teams. I mean, the conclusion seems

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to be quite clear. I can
think of another example, asthma patients.

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There are many studies of asthma patients
who experience relief, although the inhaler they

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carry does not contain any active drugs, that is, that the inhaler acts

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as medicine rather than the internal compound
itself. In some cases, more simulated

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ultrasound procedures that relieve pain in people
who have had their teeth removed or who

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manage to reduce intestinal inflammation in people
with colitis, for example. And going

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a little further, the book also
tells us about an economist by name so

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ariel law, which shows that the
effectiveness of placebos is even reinforced by their

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price. In short, when we
pay more for a drug, even if

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it' s placebo. We are
more likely to believe that it will work

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and in many cases it is a
self- fulfilling prophecy. It works.

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We' ve paid for it'
s expensive must be good. It works

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is yet another proof that the potential
for recovery lies at least partly in our

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own perceptions, rather than in active
principles, which is the thesis of the

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book. So you know, the
traditional view of health has been based for

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a long time on the assumption that
the mind and body are separated. But

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the collection of evidence from scientific studies
presented to us in this book, the

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truth is that they paint a quite
different picture. The mind and body are

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united. What happens in our mind
affects what happens in our body in other

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words, perception significantly affects our physical
well- being. Therefore, the conclusion

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here is that we can influence our
health by changing our thoughts. We can

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live a better life by simply changing
the way we think. This is very

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important. It' s going to
help you live a better life without a

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doubt starting with your thoughts. If
you liked this episode, please give me

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a like subscribe to the channel or
visit three www ideas to live better.

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Dot com there you can download for
free a copy of my latest book,

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Seven steps for a life with purpose, and also remember that you have the

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link to all my books, where
you will be able to know much more

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about this topic and other topics in
the notes of the episode a little bit

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lower and without more saying goodbye.
Thank you very much, as always and

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until the next