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Health June 2014

Aid for Age

Improve Your Health by Getting Mindful about Meditation

By Tait Trussell

    If greater well-being isn’t enough of an incentive, scientists have discovered that mindfulness techniques help improve physical health in a number of ways. It can help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.

    The cliché “mind over matter” appears to have scientific validity.

    Meditation can have significant beneficial health effects, according to new research in Spain, France, and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    They have reported the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body after periods of what’s called “mindful meditation.”

    The term “mindful meditation” may have a hollow, if not repetitive sound to it, but meditators in the study showed molecular and genetic differences that resulted in reduced inflammatory genes and rapid recovery from stress.

    "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice," said study author, Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

    "Most interestingly, the changes were observed in genes that are current targets of anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs," says Perla Kaliman, primary author of the article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona, Spain, where the molecular analyses were conducted.

    Mindfulness meditation is a western-based form of meditation born 2,500 years ago as a Buddhist form of meditation. It was designed to develop the practice of concentrating on our thoughts and experience with patience, and being conscious of not only thinking of but also being aware of other ways we experience the world, through our other senses.

    The new study analyzed the effects of a day of intensive mindfulness of a group of experienced meditators with a group of untrained persons. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the experienced meditators showed a striking molecular difference – including reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes, which resulted in more rapid recovery from a stressful condition.

    However, the study was not designed to distinguish any effects of long-term meditation training from those of a single day of practice. Instead, the key result is that meditators experienced genetic changes following mindfulness practice that were not seen in the non-meditating group after other quiet activities — an outcome indicating proof that mindfulness practice can lead to epigenetic alterations of the genome.

    The mind and the body are intimately connected; our physical health is largely determined by our mental and emotional condition, as we seniors have found.

    Kenneth Pelletier, PhD., of Stanford Medical School put it this way: “Mind and body are inextricably linked, and their second-by-second interaction exerts a profound influence upon health and illness, life and death.”

    Research has implicated chronic stress as a major contributor to a wide variety of diseases and other health issues. According to the American Psychological Association, the six leading causes of death in the U.S. are all linked to stress – heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, and suicide.

    Increasing your capacity for mindfulness is said to support many attitudes that contribute to a satisfied life. Being mindful makes it easier to savor pleasures in life as, helps you become fully engaged in activities, and creates a greater capacity to deal with adverse events.

    By focusing on the here and now, many people who practice mindfulness find that they are less likely to get caught up in worries about the future or regrets about the past, are less preoccupied, and are better able to form deep connections with others.

    If greater well-being isn’t enough of an incentive, scientists have discovered that mindfulness techniques help improve physical health in a number of ways. It can help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties.

    In recent years, psychotherapists have turned to mindfulness meditation as an important element in the treatment of a number of problems, including depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, and anxiety.

     

    Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

    Meet Tait