New scientific research is brimming with findings about the benefits of regular meditative practice. And while we are still a long way from understanding the mechanics of why the practice affects our health so profoundly, meditation studies have uncovered piles of exciting evidence indicating that it plays a key role in health, longevity, and quality of life.
Some things are easy to see. During meditation, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiration slow; the body uses less oxygen; alpha wave activity in the brain increases—indicative of peaceful states—and lactate levels drop significantly, indicating a decrease in stress. In fact meditation has been shown to be the only known practice or activity which causes lactate to diminish.
Additionally, there have been more surprising findings. For instance, the medical journal Psychosomatic Medicine reported that meditation lowered lipid peroxide levels in practitioners’ blood, the level of which is a solid indicator of biological age. Another study in the same journal revealed that meditators’ left, prefrontal cortexes (associated with positive emotion) were actually enlarged, indicating that the brain is directly, physically affected by the practice. This result was further supported at Massachusetts General Hospital when researchers found that practitioners also develop thicker cortexes, dubbed “the rind of the brain,” which is associated with higher functions like decision making and memory.
Besides the brain, meditation also has a clear impact on heart health. The journal Stroke published a study showing that patients suffering from atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries—showed a marked decrease in the thickness of artery walls when they practiced meditation, while non-meditators actually showed an increase. Even more exciting, other research has shown that long-term practitioners of meditation show an astonishing 80% less instance of heart disease.
Clearly meditation is more than just a stress-reduction technique. However, even if it were, Dr. Herbert Benson of the Mind/Body Medical institute estimates that over 60 percent of visits to the doctor are stress related. This much alone could save consumers billions of dollars.
The initial meditation studies have been so exciting, in fact, that as of this writing there have been many hundreds of experiments and investigations conducted. As a collective body, these studies have consistently demonstrated that the practice of meditation has a big impact on health. The evidence is irrefutable, suggesting that regular meditation impacts such a wide-range of diseases, it appears to act at a systemic level. Some of these include chronic pain, hypertension, heart disease, insomnia, arthritis, panic attacks and depression, skin conditions, and a whopping 50% decrease in cancer rates.
Although an individual’s healthcare ultimately rests in their own hands, at this point it makes nothing but good sense for physicians to widely recommend meditation to patients as a part of basic treatment and preventative care—and many are already doing so. Meditation is inexpensive and easy to learn, requiring little more than a small investment of time. In the end it may save a patient many thousands of dollars, to say nothing of the pain and stress associated with physical illness and traditional treatments.
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Studies show, meditation is powerful natural medicine:
→ Reduces cardiovascular disease rates by 80%
→ Reduces cancer rates by 50%
→ Lowers blood pressure and heart rate
→ Lowers the chance of stroke by 33%
→ Positively affects symptoms of stress, chronic pain, irritable bowel syndrome, PMS, menopause, impotence, arthritis, depression, anxiety and panic attacks, and dermatological conditions.
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