The BBC show Horizon ran an episode this week titled “Don’t Grow Old” that featured the Counterclockwise study. An article about the study also was published in BBC Magazine that includes a clip from the show, you can find it here:
Can the power of thought stop you ageing?
The show will be repeated on Tuesday, February 9, 2010, on BBC 1 at 2:50 GMT.
Dear Ellen,
I read with delight the article regarding your experiment with ageing. When my mother came to live with me after my father died she had turned 71. Her blood pressure and cholesterol was high, she shuffled rather than walked, she was afraid to leave the house and she constantly considered herself old and useless and she even stooped. She practically expected me to carry her everywhere. I refused from the get-go to do anything for her. I constantly told her 71 was nothing but a number and getting old was all in her mind. I did not even pick up the phone for her, buy groceries or help in anyway. Friends thought I was a mean and nasty daughter. Today, at eighty-two she is a vibrant, healthy woman who walks with vigor, is proficient on the computer, completely independent and loves life. Her best friends are younger than myself, envy her vitality and her health is perfect. Her granddaughter, a doctor, states that she hopes to grow old like her grandmother. You can call and ask her grandson (Carmel Salhi in Public Health) who studies in Harvard about his grandmother who travels the world and now refuses to be old in anyway. Her long and short term memory is fantastic and she reads constantly and listens to opera. If she met you only once ten years prior she can remember your name and what the conversation was. Yes, Prof Langer MIND IS THE NUMBER ONE CAUSE OF ILLNESS OR HEALTH. Only we get to choose.
Now that I see it has worked with my mother I am going to make sure my thoughts are constantly at an age when my health was at its best.
A fan now
Christina
