For thousands of years people
had practiced meditation for spiritual, emotional and physical wellbeing, but
from scientific perspective how exactly meditating effect your body? Does it
really do anything? It all starts in the Brain. During meditation brain can see
increased activity in regions directly correlated with decreased Anxiety and
Depression along with increased pain Tolerance. The default mode network in
particular activated when one’s mind is at rest and not focusing on the outside
world, and is found to improve memory, self-awareness, and goal setting.
Want to be more caring with your friends and family? When scientist compared the
brain of Buddhist Monks to new meditators they found the region of brain
associated with empathy to be much more pronounced in the Monks. It also
latterly changes your brain waves, and we can measure these frequencies.
Meditator have higher level of Alpha waves which have been shown to reduce the
feeling of negative mood, tensions, sadness and anger. If that is not enough it
also physically changes our brain shape and size. Studies founds after 8 weeks
of meditation program it can improve learning, memory and emotions process and
decrease stress, Blood pressure and fear.
When we look at the entire body not only we see decreased blood pressure, but it
can also increase the variability of you heart rate, and this may sound harmful
it actually play a critical role in properly transporting Oxygen and Carbon
dioxide throughout your body. Think you are getting sick?
In a study where both meditators and non-meditators were given the flu virus,
meditators were able to produce a greater number of anti-bodies and had an
increased immune function. We go little deeper we can even see changes on the
cellular level. Your chromosomes have protective protein complexes called
Telomere which help to produce damage to your DNA. Telomere have several
diseases such as Cardiovascular, Diabetes and Cancer. Amazingly when cancer
survivors completed their meditation program their body showed significant
increase in Telomere length. It’s believed that physiological intervention
particularly decreasing stress has a direct effect on Telomere. Which have been
shown contract shortening by adding DNA to the shrinking Telomere.
Off course meditation is not a substitute for other medical advice or other
healthy life style.