The Gap Between The Mind and Body In Healthcare

Written by Zach Weinburg, 10/27/2024

Imagine being transported back in time. You are surrounded by music, newspapers, and technology from 20 years ago. That’s exactly what eight elderly men volunteered to do in 1979 when Dr. Ellen Langer, from Harvard University’s Psychology Department, invited them to a week-long retreat that recreated 1959. But this was no nostalgic getaway — it was a groundbreaking psychological experiment. The men had to live like it was 1959, embracing the mindsets of younger versions of themselves. In just one week, they showed improved memory, vision, and even physical strength. Langer’s study revealed a stunning truth: our minds and bodies are more connected than we think. If pretending to live in the past can transform aging bodies, what else could we achieve by changing how we think?

Langer explores between the mind and body in the healing process. She suggests that our minds can significantly influence how quickly our bodies heal. However, most medical practices treat the brain and body as entirely separate entities. While this might not seem like a huge problem, Dr. Langer’s findings show that psychological interventions can dramatically improve healing and physical health and reduce the need for other medical treatments. 

My name is Zach Weinberg, and I am a teenager who’s deeply interested in our medical systems and the various ways we can improve them. That’s why I’m going to talk about the missing link between the mind and body in healthcare, and how shifting our approach to treating the whole body can have major benefits on various health outcomes.

The disconnected treatment of mind and body is rooted in decades of medical education that healthcare professionals receive. In the current system, when future doctors enter medical school and residency, they learn about organ systems, molecular interactions and form and function. That is not to say that more abstract elements like the social and psychological determinants of health are ignored. But it is still not considered mainstream medical teaching to really look at the mind-body connection in a more scientific, evidence-based way. This isolated way of learning leaves healthcare professionals unaware of the importance of this link and ultimately ends up compromising their patients’ health.

For example, it has been shown that patients can recover faster from non-emergencies when they believe they should recover more quickly. 

In one of Dr. Langer’s studies, she inflicted identical small wounds on subjects. They were then all placed in a room with manipulated clocks and told that the cuts would feel better after 28 minutes. The clocks ticked at different speeds—some going faster, others slower. The results showed that patients' cuts healed according to their perceived timeframe of 28 minutes. This demonstrates how healing times can be influenced by what we believe to be true. This and similar findings are not only surprising, but need to be integrated into everyday healthcare practices.

Let’s shift our focus for a moment to chronic illness. According to the CDC, an estimated 129 million people live with a chronic disease in the United States, such as Diabetes, Asthma, and Cardiovascular Disease. These people often feel heavily burdened by their conditions and helpless. Most are treated with medications aimed at slowing the progression of their illness. Dr. Langer’s work suggests that a shift in mindset or word choice—giving patients the confidence that they have control over their disease—can lead to visible improvements. 

Changing the way we think about things, even long accepted ‘truths’ is the key to mindfulness. Let’s take the simple example of 1+1 =2. Well, not always. If you are chewing 1 piece of gum and add another piece of gum, you are now chewing 1 larger piece of gum. So, sometimes 1+1 can equal 1. It’s all a matter of how we think.

Bringing it back to healthcare, her ideas and solutions go beyond traditional medical norms and redefine what it means to be mindful. 

Langer is not talking about meditation and relaxation. She says it’s (and I quote) “attention to context and attention to variability. (end quote)” and challenging the negative beliefs we hold about our health.

Another study exemplifies this idea of mindfulness against mindlessness. According to NPR, Langer conducted a survey with hotel maids and discovered that 67% of them did not view their work as exercise. They claimed they did not engage in physical activity during the week, despite spending their days walking and lugging around heavy materials. Before her intervention, she measured their blood pressure, BMI, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio, finding that their health indicators resembled those of sedentary individuals. Langer divided the maids into two groups. She informed one group that their work constituted exercise, explaining how their daily tasks were physically demanding. The other group received no such information and continued their work, being mindless and unaware. After a month, the group that was educated saw a significant drop in weight, waist-to-hip ratio, and BMI. There was also a 10% decrease in blood pressure compared to the control group. Langer explained that these results stemmed from a shift in their mindset, making them more aware of the physical activity they were already engaging in. Through simple education, these maids became healthier and happier.

In summary, we can see that, in our current healthcare system, the impact of the mind on the body is not being adequately considered. Patients continue to be treated mainly for their physical symptoms or lab values. And when patients don’t receive this holistic brain-body treatment, especially for non-emergent conditions, they aren’t optimizing their health. Acknowledging the brain body connection is not meant to replace current medical practices but rather to act as an important addition that will help create a more modern and comprehensive medical arsenal.

With this significant gap in our current healthcare system impacting the well-being and recovery of patients, what can we do? 

Today, I will present 3 key solutions to help address this issue.

The first crucial element is education. Understanding the connection between the mind and body should be a necessary component of healthcare education. And it should not be thought of or presented as ‘alternative’ medicine, but as part of the mainstream curriculum backed with research and evidence.  This integration will help health care professionals instinctively treat the brain and body as one, reducing the overuse of medications and unnecessary procedures and improving health outcomes while also lowering costs. For professionals who have already been practicing for years, this information should be strongly emphasized as part of continuing medical education. Doctors are constantly learning and sharing the best health practices through teaching sessions in hospitals, at conferences and in academic literature. These best practices must include the link between the brain and body.

Secondly, research funding should be provided to further establish and explain these psychological factors influencing health through proper medical studies.  Because there are not likely to be pharmaceutical companies paying for these studies- because they will not lead to medication sales—the funding will need to come from governments, universities or other institutions.

Finally, health care providers should actively alter their communication strategies. Langer’s research indicates that providing patients with an optimistic outlook helps them heal faster. Healthcare professionals should frame diagnoses in a wishful way. Doctors will often give patients the worst case scenario so as not to disappoint their patients, but by providing the best case scenario as a possible outcome, it will influence how patients perceive their condition.  Langer’s research shows this will help them heal faster.

We must acknowledge the missing link in our current healthcare system. Only by embracing the interconnectivity of the mind and body can we fully unlock the potential of modern medicine. By utilizing Dr. Langer’s, and similar research, we can understand the importance of integrating mindfulness and the brain-body connection into healthcare. Let’s move toward a system where doctors look beyond their specialties, promoting true healing while treating illness. Let's create a system where patients heal, not just based on what others do to them, but through what they believe they can achieve. If we change the way we think, we can change the way we heal. Real healing starts when we see the body through the mind’s eye.