A brief introduction to the technique helped people feel less negative emotion.
When exposed to their fears, people trained this way felt less negative emotion.
A single 20-minute session was enough to boost the brain’s error recognition.
The research found that the practice changes the way the brain processes fearful memories.
It changes brain activity, reducing activation in the amygdala, an area critical for processing fear.
The safest type of meditation for the anxious and depressed.
All the people in the study had never meditated before in their lives.
This type of meditation can decrease emotional reactivity, decrease mind wandering, increase the ability to focus and improve arousal.
The benefits are seen at a molecular level, reducing the inflammatory response.
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, research finds.
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.
Ms 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).
The treatment also has no side effects.
The treatment also has no side effects.
Ten minutes of mindfulness meditation could be an effective alternative to painkillers, new research finds.
The quick meditation session was enough to reduce anxiety about pain and increase both pain tolerance and threshold.
The results come from a study of 24 healthy young people.
Half meditated for 10 minutes while the other half just sat quietly.
Then they plunged their hands first into warm water and then into ice water for as long as they could.
Dr Osama Tashani, the study’s first author, said:
“While further research is needed to explore this in a more clinical setting on chronic pain patients, these results do show that a brief mindfulness meditation intervention can be of benefit in pain relief.
The ease of application and cost effectiveness of the mindfulness meditation may also make it a viable addition to the arsenal of therapies for pain management.
The mindfulness mediation was led by a researcher who was a novice; so in theory clinicians could administer this with little training needed.
It’s based on traditional Buddhist teachings which focuses attention and awareness on your breathing.”
The study was published in the journal Pain Studies and Treatment (Tashani et al., 2017).
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