In 1981, Professor Ellen Langer of Harvard University and her colleagues recruited men and women of 70's and 80's, and packed them into 2 vans and drove them to a remote town of New Hampshire, and asked those recruited to live in an environment that was in the 50's. The recruits were asked to pretend that they were 30 years younger. Both groups were surrounded by an environment which included: mid-century mementos—1950s issues of Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, a black-and-white television, a vintage radio—and they discussed the events of the time: the launch of the first U.S. satellite, Castro’s victory ride into Havana, Nikita Khrushchev and the need for bomb shelters. There was entertainment (a screening of the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder with Jimmy Stewart) and spirited discussions of such 1950s sports greats as Mickey Mantle and Floyd Patterson. One night, the men sat glued to the radio, listening as Royal Orbit won the 1959 Preakness.
A week later, both groups of men took a battery of cognitive and physical tests. After just one week in the new environment, there were dramatic positive changes across the board. Both groups were stronger and more flexible. Height, weight, gait, posture, hearing, vision—even their performance on intelligence tests had improved. Their joints were more flexible, their shoulders wider, their fingers not only more agile, but longer and less gnarled by arthritis. But the men who had acted as if they were actually back in 1959 showed significantly more improvement. Those who had impersonated younger men seemed to have bodies that actually were younger.
The results were published in Harvard Magazine, http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/09/the-mindfulness-chronicles.
The study demonstrates the importance of mind-body connection. The mind-set can even affect our perspectives of aging.
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