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that belief has on how we age. She found that older people with more positive self-perceptions of ag ing, measured up to twenty-three years earlier, lived seven and a half years longer than those with less positive self-perceptions of aging.
    The most compelling part of this study is the fact that the increase in longevity for those with the more positive attitudes toward aging remained even after other factors were taken into account, including age, gender, socioeconomic status, loneliness, and overall health. The researchers used information from the 660 participants age fifty and older from a small town in Ohio who were part of the Ohio Longitudinal Study of Aging and Retirement. Dr. Levy and her coauthors compared mortality rates to responses made twenty-three years earlier by the participants (338 men and 322 women). The responses included agreeing or disagreeing with such statements as “As you get older, you are less useful.” These beliefs often operate subconsciously, without our awareness, often beginning in childhood. Commenting on their research, the study’s authors said, “The effect of more positive self-perceptions of aging on survival is greater than the physiological measures of low systolic blood pressure and cholesterol, each of which is associated with a longer lifespan of four years or less. It is also greater than the independent contributions of lower body mass index, no history of smoking, and a tendency to exercise; each of these factors has been found to contribute between one and three years of added life.” 20
    There isn’t a drug, exercise regimen, or vitamin that comes any where near the potential of our beliefs to add seven and a half years to our lives! And that’s why examining our beliefs critically is crucial to getting and staying healthy. Dr. Langer writes, “The regular and ‘irreversible’ cycles of aging that we witness in the later stages of human life may be a product of certain assumptions about how one is supposed to grow old. If we didn’t feel compelled to carry out these limiting mindsets, we might have a greater chance of replacing years of decline with years of growth and purpose ” (emphasis mine). 21
    If we have the power to reverse the effects of aging, what might be possible with health? The hopefulness that these data raise cannot be overestimated. It suggests that if we can see beyond our collective cul tural blindness, life holds possibilities that we’ve not imagined before. But before we get there, we must first acknowledge the dead ends that many of us keep falling into. Once we see the patterns we’ve been mindlessly repeating, we can create alternative routes.
    HEALING VERSUS CURING
    Freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate—with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light—looks like grace itself.
—Martin Buber
    There is a difference between healing and curing. Healing is a natural process and within the power of everyone. Curing, which is what doctors are called upon to do, usually consists of an external treatment; medication or surgery is used to mask or eliminate symptoms. This external treatment doesn’t necessarily address the factors that contributed to the symptoms in the first place. Healing goes deeper than curing and must always come from within. It addresses the imbalance that under lies the symptoms. Healing brings together the often hidden aspects of a person’s life as they relate to her illness. Healing is different from curing, though curing and the restoration of physical function may accompany healing. One can be healed completely and go on to die of her illness. This is a key understanding that is often missing from treatises on holistic medicine: Healing and death are not mutually exclusive. As a physician, I’ve been trained to improve and preserve life. But sometimes we need to let go of that training and accept death as a natural part of a process that is much bigger and more