Meditation as a Brake on Aging

In today's fast-paced society, it's easier than ever to get wound up, worked up and stressed out. And that means enduring constantly high bodily levels of the "fight or flight" hormones cortisol and epinephrine. While these two proteins are very helpful, when the body is constantly charged with them without any "down time," a lot of negative things start happening. These include mental decline, thyroid impairment, blood sugar imbalance, muscle loss, midriff fat gain, blood pressure increase and immunity falloff.

A recent study shows that people can get their necessary "down time" - thus fighting all of these negatives - through meditation. The research, done by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Genomics Center at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center, seems to show that calming one's mental state through meditation actually affects gene expression.

The lead researcher, Herbert Benson, coined the term "relaxation response" and pioneered the study of meditation's physiological effects. In his earlier investigations, he demonstrated that the relaxation response helps heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen consumption and brain activity. His new work helps explain the causal mechanisms behind these improvements.

Benson's study examined gene expression in two groups of people - some with long experience in meditative techniques and others with none. After the comparison, the researchers trained the non-practitioners in the techniques, and re-examined the group.

What the scientists discovered was that these deep-relaxation practices alter the way genes handle inflammation, programmed cell death, and free radicals, which are charged molecules that can damage delicate cell proteins. Long-term meditators exhibited the greatest positive differences. More research is being done on stress-related disorders to see if meditative practices can benefit them.