One of the really interesting things you talk about in the book is this idea of sort of how our thoughts about aging affect our physical abilities.

What I interpreted from that is our thoughts about aging have an impact on our aging.

Yeah, so actually there's a really fascinating study, it's one of my favorite ones to talk about which was three groups of octogenarians.

What's an octogenarian?

People in their 80s.

Okay.

And one group was the control group, so they just lived like normal for a week.

One group had to reminisce about being in their 60s for most of the week whenever they had an opportunity to.

And one group were actually driven to retrofitted versions of their homes that look like what their house looked like 20 years ago.

They were given newspapers dated from 20 years ago, they had photos of themselves in that house when they were in their 60s.

And one of the things was they got there and they were they were sort of like, okay, you know, who's going to carry our suitcase up to the bedroom or whatever and they were like, no, you're 60 now, you carry your own suitcase.

So literally started from the minute they got there and these little old ladies and gentlemen had to carry their cases up.

After one week, the people in that group were taller because thus their posture improved, they had better musculoscoletal coordination than they had a week before.

And before and after photos that were shown to people that didn't know them, they were rated as younger in the one week after photos than the photos from arriving at that place.

And the reminiscing group also had some improvements but not as much as a group that lived like they were in their 60s.

So there was three groups, the ones that went back and relive their life, the ones that reminisce and the ones that did nothing at all.

Yeah.

Wow.

You talk about this your eyes as well, about you're going to get was it like laser eye surgery or something.

No, no, it's just like people told you you needed glasses.

Well, my optician told me.

So he's of Indian origin same age as me and he said, oh I think you know, you're probably going to need reading glasses next year and I was like, no, I do not want reading glasses, that makes you look really old and he was like, yeah, I know, I know we both look younger than we are but you know, your eyes are going to age just like anybody else's.

And I was like, no, they are not.

So I left, came back a year later, he said, how's it going with the reading?

So it's fine.

He sort of went, okay Tara.

So he's doing my eye test, he spins around on his little chair halfway through and says, your eyes haven't got worse, they haven't even stayed the same, they've got better.

And I said, I know and he said, what you what have you been doing?

And I said, well I just said no to you when you said I'm going to have to get reading glasses.

And when I'm like looking at my phone or a book and it feels like it would be a bit easier if I moved it further away, I just don't.

And what's that doing in the brain?

Why is that?

Why did that.

Why did that improve your reading?

Well, I hadn't experienced a problem with my reading, but he was obviously seeing the numbers slightly change.

Um, I really didn't do much more than what I've just said, so it was like not accepting the the limitation and then not changing my behavior.

And I think that's what you see from the third group of people which is that they had to change their behavior to live like without any help.

And in a way that they had to when they were younger, so that essentially removed the limitations that we impose on ourselves, which is that if I'm X age, it must mean that I need reading glasses or I need a walking stick or whatever it is.

There's a kind of opposite experiment to that too, which was done with young medical students in Florida and they had to walk between five rooms and on the table were five pieces of paper with a word on it and you had to string a sentence out of it.

But that wasn't the real experiment.

They thought that was the experiment.

The real experiment was that in one of the rooms, the words that were on the table were Florida, beach, sunshine, walk, bungalow.

And all of them walked more slowly out of that room than any of the other rooms because those words are associated with retirement.

And that made them slow down.

You asked me, is language important in our to our brain?

That's how important it is.