On a Budget? Learn Cheap Ways to Be Healthy

Learn free or low cost ways to be healthy.

Anytime is a good time to save money, be healthy, and be informed. Making healthy choices can help prevent injury, disease, and disability. Stay healthy on the cheap by including smart choices that are low cost or free. Many are simple too.

Everyday Health

Quit smoking.
Smoking is expensive, and that doesn't include the long-term costs associated with chronic disease and other problems that can develop later. Quit now.

Need affordable health care?
Many programs are available through federally-funded and state sponsored programs that are free or low-cost. They include some hospitals, health centers, public health departments, and clinics. Some programs focus only on a specific health issue or screening program. Also, the health reform law will give many Americans health care and services they may not have been able to afford in the past. Some benefits are already available and others will become available by 2014.

• Find a Health Center (HRSA)
• Find Insurance Options (HHS)
• Public Health Resources: State Health Departments
• National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program

Subscribe to text4baby. Get free health text messages for pregnant and new moms.Text4baby is a free service that provides pregnant women and new moms with free text messages each week on pregnancy and baby care health tips. These messages are timed to a woman's due date or the baby's date of birth. Sign up for the service by texting BABY to 511411 (or BEBE in Spanish) to receive free SMS text messages each week, timed to your due date or baby's date of birth.

Vaccines for Uninsured Children.
The Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program offers vaccines at no cost for eligible children through VFC-enrolled doctors. Find out if your child qualifies. Vaccinating on time means healthier children, families and communities

Avoid unnecessary medicines.
Antibiotics can kill bacteria but not viruses. Antibiotics and cough and cold medications will not cure most colds, coughs, flu, sore throats, or runny noses. These medicines can sometimes cause more harm than good. Save your money.

• Information for Consumers (FDA).

Nutrition and Physical Activity

Be active.
Nothing fancy, expensive, or complicated required to be active. Come as you are. Regular physical activity may help lower your risk for many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, colon and breast cancers, and osteoporosis. It also helps to control weight; contributes to healthy bones, muscles, and joints; and reduces falls among older adults. Adults should be active for at least 2½ hours a week. Include activities that raise your breathing and heart rate and that strengthen your muscles.

• Physical Activity for Everyone
• Pedestrian Safety

Beans instead of meat.
Use canned or dried beans in recipes instead of meat, which is more expensive. Traditional recipes made with meat such as chili, soups, and Mexican dishes like burritos are delicious with beans.

• Get Smart as You Shop  [PDF - 479KB ]

Breastfeed.
Both babies and mothers gain many benefits from breastfeeding. Breast milk is free, is easy to digest, and contains antibodies that can protect infants from infections. Women who breastfeed may also have lower rates of certain breast and ovarian cancers.


Buy canned or frozen fruits and veggies.
Depending on the recipe, canned and frozen veggies can work just as well as the fresh alternatives. They're also cheaper and last longer than fresh ones.  

• Get Smart Entertaining  [PDF - 439KB]
• Get Smart as You Shop  [PDF - 479KB]

Buy seasonal.
Purchase fresh fruits and vegetables in season when they tend to be less expensive. Blend the fruit into a smoothie to take with you on the go!

• Get Smart as You Shop  [PDF - 479KB]
• Get Smart Eating on the Go  [PDF - 402KB]

Cut your own fruits and vegetables.
Buy whole fruits and vegetables instead of pre-cut or pre-packaged forms, which tend to be more expensive.

• Get Smart as You Shop  [PDF - 476KB]

Drink water. Rethink Your Drink. Choosing water keeps you from drinking something else that may be loaded with calories and sugar. People who drink sugar-sweetened beverages tend to consume more calories. For a quick, easy, and inexpensive thirst-quencher, carry a water bottle, and refill it throughout the day. Make water more appealing by keeping it cold in the fridge or by adding a slice of fruit for flavor. Drinking fluoridated water provides protection against tooth decay. Fluoridation is the least expensive way to deliver the benefits of fluoride to all residents of a community. Tap water is fine.

Grow your own food.
Growing your own vegetables is a budget-friendly option for getting your daily dose of colorful produce. A novice gardener can produce a variety of inexpensive fresh vegetables that can be included in any summer meal.

• American Community Gardening Association

Have an "ingredient" potluck.
Do you have a favorite healthy recipe? When you invite your friends to come over, ask them to bring one of the ingredients, and then make the dish together!

• Get Smart Entertaining  [PDF - 435KB]

Limit food portions.
Take control of the amount of food that ends up on your plate. If eating out, split an entrée with a friend. Or, ask for a "to-go" box and wrap up half your meal as soon as it's brought to the table.

• How to Avoid Portion Size Pitfalls to Help Manage Your Weight
• Sodium and Food Sources

Store brands - a good deal.
Generic and store brands tend to cost less than name brands and have similar taste and nutrition.

• Get Smart as You Shop  [PDF - 479KB] 

Use coupons.
Use coupons, and look in grocery store circulars for discounts on fruits and veggies that you need.

• Get Smart Entertaining  [PDF - 434KB]

http://www.cdc.gov/Features/BudgetForHealth/

8 Yoga Poses to Help You Stay Slim

Women's Health Excerpt from Slim Calm Sexy Yoga by Tara Stiles

 If you've dismissed yoga as a chill workout that's just a bunch of stretching and deep breathing, consider this: A growing pile of research backs its many physical and psychological benefits. Want to slim down and reshape your body—and feel really freakin' good? Read on.

Secret Slimming Powers

Yoga calms your mind, but it can't possibly help you lose weight, right? Wrong. For starters, you'll sweat, blast calories, and tone and shape your entire body, especially if you practice a more physically active style of yoga, such as Ashtanga, Vinyasa, or Bikram (hot yoga). In fact, you can torch 400 calories in one Bikram class, roughly the same amount you'd burn by running for 40 minutes at a moderate pace—but with a lot less stress on your body.


That said, calorie burning is not where the bulk of yoga's weight-loss power lies. An added benefit of yoga, even from gentle styles, is that it helps you get a handle on what your body needs to be healthy. A study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found a strong link between yoga practice and weight maintenance, and researchers attribute it to "mindful" eating. Down-dog devotees, they say, learn to stay calm in the face of discomfort, and this tendency spills over into other parts of their lives—for instance, making it easier to turn down not-so-good-for-you foods, no matter how tempting they are.

The study found no such link between mindful eating and other types of physical activity, such as walking or running. Mindfulness is a powerful thing, especially when it comes to weight. In studies on what causes obesity, researchers have found that overweight people tend to underestimate how much they eat while overestimating their activity. In one study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, scientists tracked the diet and exercise habits of people who claimed they couldn't lose weight even though they cut calories. The upshot was that the volunteers had dramatically underreported their calories by 47 percent and overreported their activity by 51 percent. And their failed "diets" had nothing to do with sluggish metabolisms. When the researchers compared the participants' ability to burn calories with that of a control group, there was no difference.

Once you learn mindfulness, you'll be better able to figure out what makes your body and mind healthy. For example, maybe you'll start to notice how great your food tastes, and then you'll slow down so you can savor every delicious bite—which is a good thing, because studies have found that when you take your time at the table, you eat less.
Scientists at the University of Rhode Island had 30 volunteers eat two identical meals in a lab. During one, they were basically told to shovel the food down with a soup spoon. At the other, they were instructed to eat with a teaspoon, pause between bites, and chew each mouthful 20 to 30 times. The volunteers practically inhaled the first meal in a zippy nine minutes, on average. But when they lingered over their food, the meal stretched to nearly 30 minutes. And here's the kicker: They ate 10 percent less.

Researchers believe that when you eat more slowly, your body has more time to register fullness and satisfaction, so you stop feeling hungry before you dive into a second—or third—helping.

The Stress/Food/Weight Connection

Another crucial factor in yoga's pound-melting ability: It's proven to relax you—and that has a positive effect on your waistline. In a recent American Psychological Association survey of more than 1,800 people, 43 percent of respondents admitted they overeat when stressed. And women were more likely to stress-eat than men were.

Stress is like your own personal bodyguard that launches into defense mode in the face of a threat. At the center of this effort are your adrenal glands, which protect you by unleashing the hormones cortisol and adrenaline. You probably have a good idea what adrenaline does: It gives you an instant megashot of energy so you can deal with conflict or get away from it altogether (the fight-or-flight response). Cortisol is more like an overprotective mother whose sole mission is to feed and nurture you, and its effects are hard to miss: It can make you want to eat everything in sight, preferably foods that are high in fat and sugar, energy sources your body can use in a hurry.

Some scientists believe that cortisol also messes with signals that control appetite and feelings of fullness, which is why being stressed out may make you crave dessert even after a big meal. What's worse, when chronic stress causes your cortisol levels to stay high, it can have long-term effects on your weight, because the hormone encourages your body to store fat rather than burn it. Cortisol also lowers the production of testosterone, which is worth noting if you're trying to slim down. Chronically low testosterone can decrease muscle mass, which ultimately slows your metabolism. And this means you burn fat less efficiently. Not what you want!

But yoga can help reduce your stress and cortisol levels. Researchers measured levels of that hormone in female volunteers before and after they participated in yoga classes for a study published in the Medical Science Monitor. Their findings showed that the women's cortisol levels decreased after taking yoga. And another study, in Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, found that people who practiced yoga regularly for four years or more actually gained less weight over time than those who didn't do yoga.

The routine below builds mindfulness and helps rein in cortisol so you can eat better, kick-start your metabolism, and burn fat effectively.

Fry Fat on the Mat Routine

In this routine, your body will move through challenging positions that call upon all of your muscles to work in novel ways so that you burn the most fat. Holding these poses isn't easy, but it does wonders for building strength and focus.

Hold each pose for five deep inhales and exhales, unless noted otherwise, then repeat the entire sequence on the other side. Practice this routine four times a week and watch the fat melt away. Keep a towel by your side—you will sweat!
1. Plank

Get on your hand and knees. Tuck your toes under and straighten your legs so you're in a horizontal line. Bring your shoulder blades together, extend forward through the top of your head, and reach back through your heels. Hold for 60 seconds.
2. Down Dog

Come down on all fours. Spread your fingers wide on your mat. Tuck your toes, lift your hips up and back, and extend your legs. Press your shoulders toward the floor and relax your neck. Press your palms against the floor. Walk your feet back, pull up through your hips, and press your heels down.
3. Down Dog Split

From down dog, raise your right leg behind you, foot flexed. Keep your hips even with the floor. Reach the back of your leg straight up.
4. Down Dog, Knee to Forehead

From down dog split, inhale, rise up onto the toes of your left foot, and bring your right knee to touch your forehead. Keep your hips lifted high. Exhale and return to down dog split. Repeat four more times.
5. Low Lunge

Stand with your feet hip-width apart, arms at your sides. Step forward with your right foot. Bend forward from the waist and press your fingertips to the floor on each side of your right foot. Bend your knees slightly and step back with your left leg into a low lunge. Push through your left heel and sink your hips low.
6. High Lunge

From low lunge, lift your hips until your right thigh is parallel to the floor. Extend your arms straight up next to your ears and relax your shoulders. Put some weight onto your left foot, reach your heel out behind you for stability.
7. High Lunge with Twist

Reach your left arm forward and your right arm back, and turn your torso to the right. Relax your shoulders and look back over your right hand.
8. Rotated Triangle

Lower the fingertips of your left hand to the floor outside your right foot. Open your shoulders to the right and extend your right arm up. Bring your left foot forward about 12 inches and press your heel down so your toes point a little out to your left side. Straighten your legs

Vitamins and minerals that help with hypothyroidism

Can hypothyroidism actually be helped by vitamins as well as other nutrients? Although they have been ignored for years in the medical community, there is mounting evidence that they can not only help with this condition, a deficiency of some nutrients may actually be one of the causes of it. There are millions of people that have this condition, and although it is considered to be quite common, it should never be ignored. If it is left untreated it may cause goiter, heart problems, as well as mental health issues and infertility, just to name a few of the possible complications.

 

What exactly is it?

Hypothyroidism, also referred to as an underactive thyroid, is a condition where your thyroid gland does not produce enough of certain types of hormones. Because of this, it will upset the balance of chemical reactions in your body and if it is not treated, it can very easily lead to a number of very serious health problems. There are some very effective treatments for this condition, but it is also believed that vitamins and other nutrients can also play a major role.

Because this disease can very easily lead to other complications, understanding the signs and symptoms as early as you can will help you identify it so you can seek medical attention to have it treated.

Symptoms:

Hypothyroidism has several real warning signs that you can watch for and if any of these signs persist for any period of time, you need to seek professional help. However, it also important to understand that with this condition these symptoms will not occur suddenly. In fact, they will do the complete opposite, as in most cases they will develop very slowly and can easily be spread out over several years.

The symptoms can vary tremendously depending on how bad the hormone deficiency that you have actually is. By far and away the most common symptoms will be fatigue as well as feeling sluggish, and because it develops very slowly, these signs can very easy be ignored and blamed on the aging process. However, what is really happening is that your metabolism is slowing down as a result of this imbalance, and not all of the symptoms that will begin to surface will be this general in scope.

The next symptom is actually quite unique and it is a gradual increased sensitivity to any type of cold weather. You may also start to develop pale and dry skin, a puffy face for no apparent reason, as well as constipation. Your voice may also start to become hoarse even when you drink a lot of fluids, and you will also start to gain weight without changing your eating habits. All of these symptoms can be directly related to this imbalance and the slowing of your metabolism.

However, the list of symptoms does not end there as you may also begin to have muscle pains and aches, tenderness and swelling, as well as muscle weakness. If you are female, your menstrual periods will gradually begin to become heavier and your fingernails as well as your hair may become very brittle. At this point, if the hypothyroidism is not treated, these symptoms can rapidly increase in severity.

There is also one very large misconception about hypothyroidism; it primarily affects women in middle age. Although this is quite common, it can also affect men, children, as well as infants. Babies can be born without a thyroid gland or have the same problem with it under-preforming. The signs to watch for in infants are yellowing in both the skin as well as the white of the eyes, frequent choking, or an abnormally large and protruding tongue. They can also develop a very puffy face but this symptom is quite hard to pick up on unless it is noticed by a professional.

Children and teenagers can also develop this condition and the symptoms to watch with this age group are a very poor growth pattern, a very slow development of permanent teeth, as well as abnormally slow mental development. As they reach the teenage years, they will also show signs of a very slow or delayed puberty.

Vitamins and Nutrients:

Hypothyroidism has very effective treatments in the form of a synthetic thyroid hormone, but there are also vitamins as well as other nutrients that can help. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding vitamin D, a deficiency of this vitamin, and its role in this condition as well as other thyroid problems. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that can be obtained in three different ways; exposure to sunlight, obtained from your diet, or supplemented.

However, the vast majority of the population does not get enough exposure to sunlight and does not get enough of this vitamin in their diet. Your body can manufacture this vitamin with sunlight exposure, but the majority of sunscreens that are used to prevent skin cancer can impede this process. Vitamin D has long been associated with bone health in that it helps to active calcium and phosphorous in your body, but it is now being linked to this condition as well.  Dr. Theodore Friedman, an expert on thyroid diseases, recently published several papers after over 20 years of study, and expressed a very common theme with most thyroid patients; low levels of vitamin D.

This research suggests that this vitamin can interact with your body’s biochemistry and can either help with thyroid production, or it can do just the opposite; hinder it. It is suggested that some people may have genetic flaws where the intestines are not able to properly absorb this vitamin or it simply cannot use it as it is intended.  The U.S. National Library of Medicine also has recent studies that suggest that too little vitamin D circulating in your body inhibits its ability to regulate as well as produce thyroid hormones.

Iodine is also a very critical nutrient that has for years been linked to hypothyroidism as it is critical for several thyroid functions. Too much iodine can interfere with this process, but in the vast majority of cases there is not enough iodine in your diet. If you use iodized salt or take a multi-vitamin, this will provide adequate amounts of this nutrient. Vitamin E is also very important as it helps with the absorption of iodine as well as assists with selenium metabolism which is also critical for normal thyroid functions. Selenium is one of the major components of an enzyme that helps to convert the thyroid hormones T4 to T3 and a deficiency of this mineral may impair thyroid functions.

Summary:

Hypothyroidism can take years to develop and you may not recognize the symptoms easily at first. However, the symptoms are the real key to catching this condition and if you make regular visits to a doctor, they can catch it very easily. If you supplement these nutrients in the form of a multi-vitamin, you may never develop it. If you do have, these nutrients may help control it.

References:

Hypothyroidism. The American Thyroid Association.

www.thyroid.org/patients/broch ures/Hypo_brochure.pdf.

www.goodhormonehealth.com

L-Carnitine Treats Coronary Artery Disease

 

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 by Stephen Sinatra

L-carnitine, a water-soluble nutrient produced from the amino acids lysine and methionine, is found in all living tissue. The primary role of L-carnitine is to create ATP. L-carnitine transports fatty acids into mitochondrial membranes, where they are converted into ATP.

L-carnitine is particularly helpful in the treatment of coronary artery disease, as it helps deliver extra oxygen to blocked arteries. L-carnitine also prevents the production of toxic fatty acids. These malicious byproducts not only cause severe oxidative stress and damage cell membranes, over time they can also create changes throughout the heart that contribute to atherosclerosis.

L-carnitine can also improve blood circulation problems. It improves blood flow by supporting better use of oxygen in the tissues.

Supplemental L-carnitine comes in a number of forms. Any of them would be beneficial, but I prefer broad-spectrum products that incorporate all forms of the nutrient: L-carnitine fumarate, acetyl-L-carnitine, and propionyl-L-carnitine.

Take 500–1,000 mg two to three times daily (total daily dosage: 1–3 grams). Start at the low end of the dosage scale and work up until you achieve the desired effect. L-carnitine may require fine-tuning to obtain the optimal therapeutic blood level.

For more information on supplements for a wide variety of cardiovascular problems, visit www.drsinatra.com.

Eat More Fiber, Live Longer, Large Gov't Study Shows

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  — Eat more fiber and you just may live longer.

That's the message from the largest study of its kind to find a link between high-fiber diets and lower risks of death not only from heart disease, but from infectious and respiratory illnesses as well.

The government study also ties fiber with a lower risk of cancer deaths in men, but not women, possibly because men are more likely to die from cancers related to diet, like cancers of the esophagus. And it finds the overall benefit to be strongest for diets high in fiber from grains.
Most Americans aren't getting enough roughage in their diets. The average American eats only about 15 grams of fiber each day, much less than the current daily recommendation of 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men, or 14 grams per 1,000 calories. For example, a slice of whole wheat bread contains 2 to 4 grams of fiber.

In the new study, the people who met the guidelines were less likely to die during a nine-year follow-up period. The men and women who ate the highest amount of fiber were 22 percent less likely to die from any cause compared to those who ate the lowest amount, said lead author Dr. Yikyung Park of the National Cancer Institute.

The study, appearing in Monday's Archives of Internal Medicine, included more than 388,000 adults, ages 50 to 71, who participated in a diet and health study conducted by the National Institutes of Health and AARP.

They filled out a questionnaire in 1995 or 1996 about their eating habits. It asked them to estimate how often they ate 124 food items. After nine years, more than 31,000 of the participants had died. National records were used to find out who died and the cause of death.
The researchers took into account other risk factors including weight, education level, smoking and health status and still saw lower risks of death in people who ate more fiber.
"The results suggest that the benefits of dietary fiber go beyond heart health," said Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health, who wasn't involved in the new research but co-authored an editorial in the journal.

The evidence for fiber's benefits has been strongest in diabetes and heart disease, where it's thought to improve cholesterol levels, blood pressure, inflammation and blood sugar levels. Fiber's benefits also may come from its theorized ability to bind to toxins and move them out of the body quicker. High-fiber diets can promote weight loss by making people feel full, which has its own health-promoting effects.

However it works, fiber may offer a prevention benefit against killers like pneumonia and flu, the new study suggests. The cancer benefit may have shown up only in the men because they're more likely than women to die from cancers related to diet, Park said.
Fiber is found in fruits, vegetables and beans. But fiber from grains was most strongly tied to the lowered risk in the study.

"That's what seemed to be driving all these relationships," said Lawrence de Koning of the Harvard School of Public Health, a co-author of the editorial. Whole grains also contain vitamins and minerals, which may play a role in reducing risk, he said. For that reason, supplements may not be as effective. "Nothing beats the original food," he said. He suggested substituting whole wheat bread for white bread as a simple way to increase fiber from grains.

What does a high-fiber diet look like?

A woman who wants to meet the 25 gram guidelines for daily fiber intake could eat one-third cup of bran cereal (9 grams), a half cup of cooked beans (10 grams), a small apple with skin (4 grams) and a half cup of mixed vegetables (4 grams).

To reach 38 grams, a man could eat all that – plus about 23 almonds (4 grams), a baked potato (3 grams), an oat bran muffin (3 grams) and an orange (3 grams).
Experts recommend adding fiber gradually to allow your digestive system time to get used to it.

CARLA K. JOHNSON   02/14/11 04:35 PM  

Daytime Napping May Boost Heart Health

By Catherine Donaldson-Evans Mar 1st 2011 

Categories: News

Taking a daytime cat nap for up to an hour may be good for your heart and its reaction to psychological stress, new findings suggest.

Sleeping during the day seems to help the heart repair itself after a stressful event, according to a study by researchers at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania.

The authors say that participants who took a stress test and then slept at least 45 minutes had lower blood pressure on average than those who didn't sleep at all after the exercise.

"Daytime sleep may offer cardiovascular benefit by accelerating cardiovascular recovery following mental stressors," the researchers wrote in the paper, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Co-authors Ryan Brindle and Sarah Conklin looked at 85 healthy college students, dividing them into two groups. One was given the chance to nap for up to an hour after taking a mental stress test in the lab; the other wasn't.

Participants also had to fill out surveys asking about the quality of their sleep and do a cardiovascular reactivity test, which asked them to complete a difficult mental math problem, according to a summary of the findings.

The students' pulse rates and blood pressure were taken regularly throughout the exercise.

The authors found that daytime naps seemed to rejuvenate the students who were able to sleep, with those subjects reporting lower levels of sleepiness than the group that stayed awake. And while the blood pressure and pulses of both groups increased after the stress test, the nappers had much lower blood pressure readings on average than those who didn't sleep.

Brindle and Conklin say more work needs to be done to pinpoint the link between daytime naps and cardiovascular health and examine why a short daytime sleep may help the heart recover from stress.

Previous research has uncovered a link between lack of sleep and obesity, depression, cardiovascular problems and hypertension.

Why Meditate? Science Finds Clues

How being mindful may make you happier

by Rachel Brand

 

Buddhists, yogis and ayurvedic doctors have said for centuries that meditation improves health and well-being. Now scientists are trying to prove it.
Several clinical studies have documented specific ways that meditating may help people stay healthier, sharpen mental focus and gain more power over their emotions. Some studies even show that the brain of someone who meditates may be physically different from the next guy’s.
Scientists say it’s a very new field of study. But their findings to date offer compelling confirmation to the more than 20 million Americans who meditate — and tell skeptics that those who are getting on the cushion every day might be onto something.

Can meditation make you happier?

When emotions wreak havoc, it helps to “get it out” — ranting to a therapist, friend or spouse, or writing about your feelings in a journal. Sitting down on a cushion to meditate is seemingly the polar opposite of this catharsis. But could it be that the two approaches are helpful for similar reasons?

Talking or writing about your feelings forces you to call them something. And one technique taught in mindfulness meditation is naming your emotions. It’s part of noticing and detaching from those emotions vs. letting them hijack your bliss. Meditation instructor Dianna Dunbar calls it “the mindfulness wedge.” It’s about “helping people develop that pause button,” she says, so they can observe emotions from the outside.

Two UCLA studies showed “that simply labeling emotion promotes detachment,” says David Creswell, Ph.D., a meditation researcher at the university who joined colleague Matthew D. Lieberman, Ph.D., in heading up the studies.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity and pinpoint where in the brain it occurs, Lieberman’s team found that assigning names to negative emotions turns down the intensity of activity in the amygdala — an almond-sized sector of the brain that acts like an alarm system: When you witness a car crash, argue with your spouse or get yelled at by your boss, it’s your amygdala’s job to set off a cascade of stress-related reactions.
But if you simply name the distressing event, Lieberman says, you can wield more power over your amygdala’s freak-out. “When you attach the word ‘angry,’” he explains, “you see a decreased response in the amygdala.”

Creswell’s 2007 study supported these findings. His team asked 27 undergraduates to fill out a questionnaire on how “mindful” they were — how inclined they were to pay attention to present emotions, thoughts or sensations. They found a striking difference between the brains of those who called themselves mindful and those who didn’t: Mindful patients showed more activity in the areas that calm down emotional response, known as the prefrontal cortex; and less activation in the amygdala.

Twenty-year meditation practitioner Joyce Bonnie says the UCLA findings aren’t surprising to her. But she says having that emotion-diffusing ability is one thing, and using it is another.
“It’s very challenging to bring what you practice on the meditation cushion out in a real-life situation,” says Bonnie, an independent filmmaker in Santa Monica, Calif. “When you’re actually in that moment — say someone is yelling at you — you have to remember to step back, say, ‘Oh, that’s anger I’m feeling,' and change what you do with that emotion, all in a millisecond. It takes a lot of practice.”

Still, the clinical results “may explain the beneficial health effects of mindfulness meditation,” Creswell says, “and suggest why mindfulness meditation programs improve mood and health.
“For the first time since [the Buddha’s] teachings,” he adds, “we have shown that there is actually a neurological reason for doing mindfulness meditation.”

Can meditation make you healthier?

Thirty-seven-year-old mom Nikki Ragonese has meditated for six years as one way to cope with painful degenerative osteoarthritis. Meditation, she says, makes it easier to accept her pain and the difficult emotions it fuels.
“Often when you feel something, you don’t acknowledge it,” Ragonese says. “And by avoiding that feeling, you perpetuate greater pain. Meditation helps me realize that I create my own feelings. If I’m in a state of frustration and I stop and observe it, I realize there’s another way to deal with the pain.”

Ragonese’s mindfulness meditation instructor in Boulder, Colo., therapist Dianna Dunbar, agrees. “I’ve seen patients who gain a greater sense of awareness of their pain become nonjudgmental observers of their pain,” she says. “They are less irritable, and more able to calm down and relax.”

Science is starting to churn out more evidence echoing Ragonese and Dunbar’s experience, showing signs that mindfulness meditation can help ease symptoms of conditions including psoriasis and hypertension as well as chronic pain.
Meditating also slows breathing rate, blood pressure and heart rate, and there’s some evidence that meditation may aid treatment of anxiety, depression, high blood pressure and a range of other ailments.

Can meditation make you smarter?

The buzz about meditation’s ability to turn out shiny, happy people makes you wonder: Do people who meditate have something different going on upstairs than non-meditators do?
A noted 2005 study by Sara Lazar, Ph.D., an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, aimed to find out which parts of the brain become active when a person practices mindfulness and meditation. Her team studied 20 people who meditate regularly and 20 who don’t.
The results were astounding: Brain regions associated with attention, sensory awareness and emotional processing — the cortex — were thicker in meditators. In fact, meditators’ brains grew thicker in direct correlation with how much they meditated.

The findings suggest that meditation can change the brain’s structure — perhaps because certain brain regions are used more frequently in the process of meditation, and therefore grow.
Lazar says it’s a “huge, huge, huge” leap to assert that meditators’ brains function better. “We really don’t know how meditation works,” Lazar cautions, stressing that scientists are merely uncovering “pieces of the puzzle.”

Yet for anyone accustomed to waiting for a chorus of nods from science before trying alternative methods, these tip-of-the-iceberg findings may be ample proof of what Eastern cultures have been saying for centuries: Meditation is good for you.

Source:
http://life.gaiam.com/article/why-meditate-science-finds-clues?utm_source=bluetext&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Life&RMID=Life_2011_03_03_Meditation_25PctGreen&RRID=11851261