For thousands of years people have practiced meditation for spiritual, emotional and physical well being. But from a scientific perspective, how exactly does meditating affect your body ?
It all starts in the brain! During meditation, brain-scans see increased activity in regions directly correlated with anxiety and depression, along with increased pain tolerance.
Does it do anything ?
The Default Mode Network , in particular is activated when one's mind is at rest and not focusing on outside world, and has been found to improve memory, self awareness and goal setting.
Want to be more caring to your friends and family ?
When scientists compared the brains of Buddhist monks to a new meditators, they found the region of the brain associated with empathy to be much pronounced in the monks. It also changes your brain waves - and we can measures these frequencies. Meditators have higher levels of Alpha waves, which have been shown to reduce feelings of negative mood, tension, sadness and anger. And if that wasn't enough, it also physically changes your brain shape and size.
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Studies found that 8 weeks a of meditation program, gray matter was more dense in areas associated with learning, memory processing, and emotion regulation. And yet the amygdala, which deals with stress, blood pressure and fear, had decreased gray matter !
When we look the entire body, not only do we see decreased blood pressure, but it can also increased the variability of your heart rate.While this may sound harmful, it actually plays a critical role in properly transporting oxygen and carbon dioxide throughout your body.
Think your getting sick ?
In a study where both meditator and non meditators were given the flu virus, meditators were able to produce a greater number of antibodies and had increased immune system.
If we go even deeper we can see changes on a cellular levels. your chromosomes have protective protein complexes called telomeres , which help reduce damage to your DNA and lower cell death.
And a shortened telomere length has been linked to several diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, alzheimer's and cancer. Amazingly, when cancer survivors completed a meditation program, their bodies showed significant increases in telomere length. It's believed that psychological intervention, particularly decreasing stress, has a direct effect on the enzymes telomerase, which has been shown to counteract shortening by adding DNA to the shrinking telomeres.
Of course, meditation is not a substitute for other medical advice or a healthy lifestyle. But much like hitting the gym can grow your muscles and increase your overall health, it seems that meditation may be a way of 'working out' of your brain with extra health benefits. And since your brain controls, well...all of you, why not relax and meditate once a while.
And if you like working out your brain, be sure to comment down and share you meditating experience!!!
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