Category: Mindfulness

Way of thinking may also help people over the initial aversion to exercising.

People who are naturally more ‘mindful’ are less likely to be obese.

The naturally mindful also have less abdominal fat than those of a more distracted nature.

While being naturally mindful is something that’s part of your personality, it can also be taught.

Dr Eric Loucks, who led the study, said:

“This is everyday mindfulness.

The vast majority of these people are not meditating.”

394 people in the study responded to prompts that probed how mindful they were.

For example, strongly agreeing with both of the statements below suggests low levels of natural mindfulness:

• I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present.
• I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.

Mindfulness may stop obesity by making people aware when they are overeating.

It may also help people over the initial aversion to exercising.

Dr Loucks said:

“That’s where the mindfulness may come in.

Being aware of each and every moment and how that’s related to what we do and how we feel.”

Other studies have also shown that greater mindfulness can improve diet and help overcome cravings.

As I wrote in a previous article on food and the mind:

“Eating is so routine that we easily zone out from the experience.

While our minds are wandering, though, our hands are shovelling it in faster and faster.

Studies have shown that people eat more when they are distracted, like when watching TV or talking with friends (Bolhuis et al., 2013).

Unfortunately when not focusing on our food, we tend to eat more and get less enjoyment from it.

This is why one approach that’s used to combat eating disorders and obesity is mindful eating.

This is taking smaller bites and paying more attention to what you are eating.

Not only do people eat less this way, but they also enjoy it more.”

The results of the current study were encouraging but natural mindfulness only had a modest link to weight.

Dr Loucks said:

“Awareness seems to be enough to have a small to medium effect.

Then there is the question of what could we do to increase it.”

Related

• Weight Loss: The 16 Best Psychological Techniques (P)
• How To Beat Food Cravings: 12 Psychology Studies Reveal All (P)

The study was published in the journal International Journal of Behavioral Medicine (Loucks et al., 2015).

The benefits are seen at a molecular level, reducing the inflammatory response.

Mind-body practices such as meditation, yoga and Tai Chi can reverse the effects of stress on our DNA.

Usually stress causes increased levels of a molecule called nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kB).

This is involved in the reaction to stress and how our genes are expressed.

It also has a key role in how our bodies respond to infection.

Practices like meditation reduce the levels of this stress-related molecule.

They also lower the levels of cytokines in the body — these are linked to inflammation at the cellular level.

Dr Ivana Buric, the study’s first author, said:

“Millions of people around the world already enjoy the health benefits of mind-body interventions like yoga or meditation, but what they perhaps don’t realise is that these benefits begin at a molecular level and can change the way our genetic code goes about its business.

These activities are leaving what we call a molecular signature in our cells, which reverses the effect that stress or anxiety would have on the body by changing how our genes are expressed.

Put simply, MBIs cause the brain to steer our DNA processes along a path which improves our wellbeing.

More needs to be done to understand these effects in greater depth, for example how they compare with other healthy interventions like exercise or nutrition.

But this is an important foundation to build on to help future researchers explore the benefits of increasingly popular mind-body activities.”

For the study, researchers pulled together the results of 18 different studies on 846 people across 11 years.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology (Buric et al., 2017).