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:
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Why You Need This Vitamin Now

By Health.com

You may already know that vitamin D can help build strong teeth and bones, but wait until you hear what else it can do for the rest of your body. D can keep you trim, boost your mood, ward off sniffles, drastically cut your risk of cancer, and more. "We could prevent 150,000 cases of cancer annually if we could just increase vitamin D to optimal levels," says Cedric Garland, a doctor of public health, a leading vitamin D researcher, and a professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of California, San Diego.
That's great news, right? Yes, except for one huge problem: A startling report found that more than a third of all women fail to get enough D for healthy bones -- and more than 75 percent of us lack the higher amounts needed for the vitamin to do its disease-fighting best.

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Downing a daily glass of milk is a smart way to get more D. But the most significant source is sunlight, and that's where the trouble lies. Our bodies produce D with exposure to ultraviolet radiation, but as we've gotten smarter about dodging skin cancer -- staying out of the sun and slathering ourselves with mega-SPF sunblock -- our vitamin D levels have plummeted. Fortunately, there are smart and safe ways to boost your intake while you enjoy all the benefits that vitamin D can deliver.

Lower Your Risk of Cancer
Vitamin D may substantially cut the risk of breast, colon, prostate, and ovarian cancers, according to a growing body of research. In fact, Dr. Garland found that women with D blood levels that were more than double the current national average of 25 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml) had a 50 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest blood levels. Scientists believe that D helps regulate genes in a way that protects healthy cells and stops the growth of cancerous ones.

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There are receptors for vitamin D in virtually all of the body's cells, and to "feed" them you need an adequate blood level of the vitamin. That depends not only on how much time you spend outside and what you eat but also on where you live. People living at higher latitudes, for example, soak up fewer UVB rays from November through March, which means they're more likely to have low blood levels of vitamin D and a higher risk of cancer. In fact, studies have shown twice as many colon cancer deaths and 50 percent more breast cancer deaths in the far North compared with the sunnier South, Dr. Garland says. So how much sun is enough to lower the risk of cancer without upping your risk of skin damage?

Fight Off Winter Weight Gain
Cold weather may seem a long way off right now, but more indoor time and fewer hours of sunlight can lead to a decrease in D production for many women. Researchers think that may explain why some women bulk up a bit when the temps fall: Low levels of D can cause a dip in leptin, a hormone that regulates appetite. When this happens, your brain may not send the signal that you're full and should stop eating.

Overweight women are especially at risk because excess fat can absorb vitamin D, making it unavailable to the body.
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Safeguard Your Healthy Heart  
Vitamin D is thought to help lower blood pressure and regulate hormones that affect blood vessels and the muscles of the heart. Studies suggest that people with the highest D levels may have up to a 50 percent lower risk of heart disease. And researchers from Harvard Medical School reported a 62 percent increased risk of heart attacks or strokes among adults with the lowest blood levels of vitamin D, compared with those who have the highest levels of D. "We've also noticed that deaths from cardiovascular events are highest in the winter months, when vitamin D is generally at its lowest," Dr. Garland says.

Say Good-bye to Seasonal Blues
Low vitamin D levels may be linked to yet another winter bummer: seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression that is more common in northern states. Researchers believe that vitamin D helps keep the brain flush with the "happy hormone," serotonin, which plays a critical role in regulating mood.

The nutrient also seems to offer a lifetime of brain-health benefits, from aiding development in infants to keeping adults sharp in their later years. "Vitamin D receptors in the brain seem to turn on several genes that are important for normal neurological function,"  says Bruce Hollis, PhD, a vitamin D researcher and professor of molecular biology at the Medical University of South Carolina.

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Boost Your Defenses Against Colds and Flu
Research shows that colds and the flu are worst when vitamin D levels decline, and they tend to hit hardest in countries at higher latitudes, where D levels tend to be lowest. So should we pitch out the C and hail the "sunshine vitamin" as the cure for the common cold? Experts aren't making that claim just yet, but there's compelling evidence that keeping your D level high may slash your chances of picking up the bug that's going around the office. In one study, women who took 800 IU of vitamin D daily were three times less likely to develop colds or the flu -- and those who popped 2,000 IU reported even fewer symptoms. Small wonder some scientists have started calling D the "antibiotic vitamin."
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Prevent Autoimmune Disorders  
Vitamin D seems to interact in a protective way with genes that raise the risk for diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS), a debilitating nerve illness that strikes mostly young women. In one Harvard University study, researchers found a 40 percent lower risk of MS in women who took a daily supplement of at least 400 IU of vitamin D. In fact, some studies suggest that vitamin D may help prevent many other autoimmune disorders -- including rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, and Crohn's disease. Even in healthy women, low levels of vitamin D may lead to increased inflammation, a negative response of the immune system.

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Build Stronger Bones
The work that D does with calcium to keep bones healthy may be old news, but it's no less important, especially for women. Osteoporosis and fractures due to bone weakness strike up to half of all females, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, and loading up on calcium-rich foods may not help much if you're D-deficient. The nutrient helps your body absorb calcium and phosphorus, minerals that enhance bone strength. A supplement can help: A recent study found that, regardless of their calcium intake, women who added 482 to 770 IU of vitamn D slashed their risk of fractures by up to 20 percent.