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How Can We Reverse Aging?
改变心态能否使人变得更年轻？
Imagine that you could rewind the clock 20 years,and you're 20 years younger.
想象一下你能将时钟回拨20年，然后年轻20岁，
How do you feel?
你会感觉如何呢？
Well, if you're at all like the subjects in a provocative experiment by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer,you actually feel as if your body clock has been turned back two decades.
好吧，如果你跟哈佛心理学家艾伦·兰格曾做过的一项颇具争议性的实验的受试者一样的话，事实上你会感觉自己的生物钟似乎被调回了20年前。
Langer did a study like this with a group of elderly men some years ago,renovating an isolated old New England hotel so that every visible sign said it was 20 years earlier.
几年前，兰格对一群老年人做了类似的研究，她将一个远离城镇的老式新印哥蓝旅馆进行了整修，以便所有可看到的标志都表明当时是20年前。
The men-in their late 70s and early 80s-were told not to recall the past,but to actually act as if they had traveled back in time.
接受实验的老年人—年龄都接近80岁，或者80岁出头—被告知不要回忆过去，而要假装自己真的回到了过去。
The idea was to see if changing the men's mindset about their own age might lead to actual changes in health and fitness.
实验的目的是想知道，人们看待自己年龄的心态的改变，是否会导致其健康方面的实际改变。
Langer's findings were stunning:
兰格实验的结果是令人震惊的:
After just one week, the men in the experimental group had more joint flexibility,increased handiness and less arthritis in their hands.
实验进行仅仅一周后，与对照组的同龄老人相比，实验组的老人的关节更灵活，手更灵巧，而且关节炎的发病率也更低。
Their mental sensitivity had risen measurably,and they had improved posture.
他们的思维明显更敏锐了，身姿也更矫健了。
Outsiders who were shown the men's photographs judged them to be significantly younger than the controls.
看到他们照片的外人都觉得他们比对照组的人明显年轻。
In other words, the aging process had in some measure been reversed.
换言之，衰老过程在一定程度上被扭转了。
Though this sounds a bit woo-wooey,Langer and her Harvard colleagues have been running similarly inventive experiments for decades,and the accumulated weight of the evidence is convincing.
虽然这听起来有点不可思议，但兰格和她的哈佛同事们进行此类创意性实验已经几十年了，并且积累的实验数据很有说服力。
Her theory, argued in her new book, Counterclockwise,is that we are all victims of our own stereotypes about aging and health.
她在自己的新书《逆时针》中提到了这月的理论: 我们都对衰老和健康有一些固化的印象和看法，并深受其害。
We mindlessly accept negative cultural cues about disease and old age,and these cues shape our self-concepts and our behavior.
我们不知不觉地接受着关于疾病和衰老的消极文化暗示，而这些暗示又影响了我们的自我意识和行为。
If we can shake loose from the negative clichés that dominate our thinking about health,we can "mindfully" open ourselves to possibilities for more productive lives even into old age.
如果我们能从主导我们对健康的观念的负面陈腐思想中解脱出来，那么即便已步入老年，我们也能有意识地敞开心扉去迎接更富有成就的生活。
Langer's point is that we are surrounded every day by subtle signals that aging is an undesirable period of decline.
兰格的观点是，我们每天都被微妙的暗示所包围，这些暗示让我们觉得衰老是令人生厌的衰退期。
These signals make it difficult to age gracefully.
由于这些暗示，我们很难优雅地变老。
Similar signals also lock all of us-regardless of age-into pigeonholes for disease.
类似的暗示还把我们所有人—不分年龄地—困在了疾病的分类架上。
We are too quick to accept diagnostic categories like cancer and depression,and let them define us.
我们总是太容易接受诸如癌症和抑郁症等的疾病诊断分类，并且让这些疾病定义我们的健康状态。
That's not to say that we won't encounter illness,bad moods or a stiff back.
这并不是说我们不会遭遇疾病，不良情绪或腰酸背痛。
But with a little mindfulness,we can try to embrace uncertainty and understand that the way we feel today may or may not connect to the way we will feel tomorrow.
但如果我们稍微有心一点，我们便可以尝试包容生活中一些不确定的东西，并且明白我们今天的感受可能跟明天的感受有关，也可能无关。
