Meditation

Meditation is generally very beneficial for many dimensions of well being. A great advantage of meditation to help you relax and feel good is that meditation helps you to avoid taking drugs for these problems, which often have troubling side effects. Meditation has also been found to help control blood pressure. Recent research shows that mindfulness meditation also helps to improve your mind.

One 15-minute focused-breathing meditation may help people make smarter choices, according to new research from researchers at INSEAD and The Wharton School. The findings are published in the February issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Meditation is just as effective as antidepressant drugs in treating anxiety or depression, but without the side effects, according to a study conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University and published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. The study was funded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

A thickening of the brain cortex associated with regular meditation or other spiritual or religious practice could be the reason those activities guard against depression – particularly in people who are predisposed to the disease, according to new research led by Lisa Miller, professor and director of Clinical Psychology and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University.

A new analysis from Johns Hopkins researchers shows mindful meditation for 30 to 40 minutes a day could ease symptoms of anxiety and depression as well as some medications. Compared to drug therapy to lower stress, meditation is harmless, the study authors point out.

A review of the published scientific evidence has found that relaxation programs involving meditation offer a small benefit to people with a medical condition, including effects against depression similar in size to those achieved with antidepressant drugs.

Using a computational model of addiction, a literature review and an in silico experiment, theoretical computer scientist Yariv Levy and colleagues suggest in a new paper this week that rehabilitation strategies coupling meditation-like practices with drug and behavior therapies are more helpful than drug-plus-talk therapy alone when helping people overcome addiction.

Recent scientific research regarding the effects of meditation on human psychology and physiology has revealed that the popular practice holds tremendous potential for natural well-being. Initially, it was believed that meditation can only change behavioral patterns and enhance emotional stability, but it has now become clear that this is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, mediation triggers very important genetic and physiological changes in the human body.

Practitioners have been attesting to it for years, and now medical science is waking up to the idea that meditation really does have health benefits. A new study, published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, has discovered specific molecular changes in the body after a period of mindful meditation.

Meditation is known to have a beneficial effect on health. But now researchers have evidence that practicing meditation actually changes gene expression that could help prevent a variety of diseases. And it happens in a sneaky way.