Meditation: Enhancing The Benefits

Meditation has been a practice for thousands of years, originating in ancient India and used in Hindu, Buddhist, Zen/Chan and Taoist communities. Today, it is a popular way to reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep, boost cognitive skills, and develop concentration.

Meditation is the process of training your mind to focus and redirect your thoughts. It connects the mind and body, bringing mental and physical peace. It can be practised alone or in groups, and can be as short as 13 minutes a day.

Research has shown that meditation has a positive impact on our physical and mental health, with benefits including reduced blood pressure, lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and improved memory. It can also help with pain management, and reduce symptoms of stress-related conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder, and fibromyalgia.

Meditation is an easy and free way to improve your overall health and well-being.

Improved sleep quality

Meditation can help improve sleep quality by initiating physiological changes in the body that promote sleep. These changes include increased melatonin and serotonin, decreased blood pressure, and activation of parts of the brain that control sleep.

A 2015 study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that adults with moderate sleep issues who meditated for six weeks experienced fewer insomnia symptoms and less daytime fatigue. The researchers suggested that meditation helps to improve the relaxation response and control of the autonomic nervous system, making it harder for external factors to interrupt sleep.

Meditation can also help to reduce stress and worry, which are often the root causes of sleep problems. By quieting the mind and enhancing inner peace, meditation can promote overall calmness, making it easier to fall and stay asleep.

To use meditation to improve sleep quality, it is important to establish a regular meditation routine. Start with a few minutes of meditation before bed each night, slowly increasing the time to 15-20 minutes as you learn to quiet your mind.

• Mindfulness meditation: Focus on the present moment, your consciousness, breathing, and body. Observe any thoughts or emotions without judgment and then let them pass.
• Guided meditation: Listen to a recording of another person leading you through each step of meditation, including breathing, relaxation, and visualization.
• Body scan meditation: Focus on each part of your body, increasing awareness of physical sensations, tension, and pain. This promotes overall relaxation, making it easier to fall asleep.

In addition to improving sleep quality, regular meditation can also provide other benefits such as reduced tobacco cravings, improved pain response, controlled blood pressure, and improved heart health.

Boosted memory

Meditation has been shown to improve memory, particularly in older adults. Research has shown that older adults at risk of Alzheimer's disease can improve their memory and thinking by spending just 12 minutes each day practicing Kirtan Kriya, a type of meditation that uses repeated phrases, hand motions, and visualizations.

Meditation has also been shown to improve memory and mental clarity in people with age-related memory loss. Kirtan Kriya, a method of meditation that combines a mantra or chant with repetitive motion of the fingers to focus thoughts, has been found to improve performance on neuropsychological tests in people with age-related memory loss.

In addition, a review found preliminary evidence that multiple meditation styles can increase attention, memory, and mental quickness in older adults. The improved focus that can be gained through regular meditation may boost memory and mental clarity, helping to fight age-related memory loss and dementia.

Meditation has also been found to improve memory and cognitive functioning in students. In one experiment, higher education students who received a brief meditation after a lecture retained more information and performed better on a subsequent class test based on the lecture content than those who did not meditate.

Furthermore, regular meditation has been shown to slow brain aging and reduce age-related thinning of the prefrontal cortex. A 2016 study found that the brains of long-term meditators appeared to be 7.5 years younger than those of non-meditators.

Reduced blood pressure

Meditation has been shown to reduce blood pressure, with research indicating that blood pressure decreases during meditation and over time in people who meditate regularly. This can reduce strain on the heart and blood vessels, helping to prevent heart disease.

How Meditation Reduces Blood Pressure

Meditation appears to control blood pressure by relaxing the nerve signals that coordinate heart function, blood vessel tension, and the "fight-or-flight" response that increases alertness in stressful situations. This relaxation response is the opposite of the stress-induced fight-or-flight response and can be evoked through transcendental meditation and mindfulness meditation.

Research on Meditation and Blood Pressure

A meta-analysis of 12 studies enrolling nearly 1,000 participants found that meditation helped reduce blood pressure, particularly in older adults and those with higher blood pressure prior to the study. Another review concluded that several types of meditation produced similar improvements in blood pressure.

How to Extend the Benefits

To extend the benefits of meditation for reduced blood pressure, consistency is key. Regular meditation practice helps to maintain the positive effects on blood pressure regulation. Additionally, combining meditation with other healthy lifestyle habits, such as physical activity, a balanced diet, and stress management techniques, can further contribute to maintaining healthy blood pressure levels.

The amount of meditation needed to reduce blood pressure may vary from person to person. Some studies have suggested daily meditation sessions ranging from 15 minutes to an hour. However, it's important to start slowly and gradually increase the duration. For beginners, starting with 5-minute sessions and gradually increasing to 15 or 20 minutes over a couple of weeks is recommended.

Less anxiety and depression

Meditation has been shown to reduce anxiety and depression. It can help to manage and reduce stress and anxiety, which are major triggers for depression.

Meditation trains the brain to focus and to return to that focus when negative thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations arise. It helps to break the connection between the "me center" (the medial prefrontal cortex, or mPFC) and the "fear center" (the amygdala) in the brain, which work together to cause depression. The mPFC is where you process information about yourself, such as worrying about the future and ruminating about the past, and the amygdala triggers the release of the stress hormone cortisol in response to fear and perceived danger.

Research has shown that meditation may decrease anxiety, especially in those with the highest levels. For example, one study found that eight weeks of mindfulness meditation helped reduce anxiety symptoms in people with generalized anxiety disorder. Another study found that completing an eight-week meditation program led to noticeable improvements in depression, anxiety, and pain over one year.

Meditation can also help prepare the brain for stressful situations. For example, meditating for a few moments before a doctor's appointment or social situation can help shift the brain and body out of the stress response and into a state of relative calm.

Improved immune system

Meditation has been shown to have a positive impact on the immune system. A review of 20 randomised control trials found that mindfulness meditation:

• Reduced markers of inflammation, which are often correlated with decreased immune functioning and disease.
• Increased the number of CD-4 cells, which are the immune system's helper cells that send signals to other cells, telling them to destroy infections.
• Increased telomerase activity, which helps promote chromosome stability and prevents deterioration, which can lead to cancer and premature ageing.

Another study found that meditation can reduce stress levels, which in turn reduces the release of inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. These chemicals can affect mood and lead to depression, so reducing them can improve immune system functioning.

Meditation has also been shown to increase activity in the prefrontal cortex, right anterior insula, and right hippocampus—the areas of the brain that act as the immune system's command centre. When these parts of the brain are stimulated through mindfulness, the immune system functions more effectively.

Furthermore, mindfulness-based stress reduction can help to maintain healthy gut microbiota diversity, which is often upset by stress. This is important because the gut microbiota plays a key role in distinguishing between intruder/foreign microbes and those that are endogenous.

Finally, a study by researchers at UCLA found that the more meditation training sessions HIV-positive men attended, the higher their CD-4 cell count. This study links mindfulness with a healthier immune system functioning.

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