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"    Published in the September 2013 issue You should be meditating every day. Stress evokes the flight-or-fight response. It increases your energy metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breathing. It triggers the secretion of adrenaline and noradrenaline, but because you&amp;#039;re not running or fighting \u2014 because, in fact, you are probably sitting at a desk or lying in bed not sleeping\u2014your body can&amp;#039;t use those hormones appropriately. And unused adrenaline puts you at an increased risk for a number of diseases and conditions \u2014 anxiety, depression, insomnia, heart attacks, strokes, bowel disorders, infertility. These lead many people to take excessive medications. But in fact, by some estimates, at least 60 percent and as many as 90 percent of doctor visits are for problems that start with stress. Now, we have within us a response opposite to the stress response. It&amp;#039;s called the relaxation response, a physiologic, genetic set of changes that counteract stress. There are scores of ways to bring forth the relaxation response. One is meditation. Another is repetitive prayer. Yoga. Tai chi. They all seem to work the same way; mainly, they change the genes&amp;#039; activity, turning off genes that cause problems with stress. Two steps bring forth the relaxation response. The first is a repetition. That repetition can be a word, a sound, a prayer, a phrase, or even a repetitive movement. The second is seeing through other thoughts when they come to mind and returning to the repetition. Meditation breaks the chain of everyday thinking. Whether a mantra, a thought, a prayer, or a few minutes of ritualized quiet, these practices decrease heart rate, blood pressure, and rate of breath and create specific brain waves, and are wonderful in terms of dealing with stress and its ravages. To the extent that any ache or pain is being caused by stress, the relaxation response takes care of it. Literally millions of patients are now evoking it regularly. And people feel better. Dr. Herbert Benson is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director Emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine. READ OUR WHOLE GUIDE:  PLUS: LET HEADSPACE HELP YOU MEDITATE      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/health/a24358/meditate-every-day-0913/>