The Meditation Medicine
The approach to resilient health takes incorporates many factors besides nutrition and exercise.
That's why my five health cornerstones—cognitive/mental wellness, sleep, exercise, nutrition, and prevention—covers most of the bases on the path to home run health. Failing to optimize any health aspect because of lapses, poor judgment, or unawareness puts us at risk of serious health decline and chronic diseases.
Stress management falls into the category of cognitive/mental health. The detrimental damage inflicted by stress becomes obvious in our daily lives, but the unsuspecting cracks in our health happen at the cellular level.
- Oxidative stress and mitochondrial damage
- Shorter telomeres
- Chronic cortisol dysregulation
Dysregulation of brain hormones in the pituitary-hypothalamic-adrenal axis triggers a negative feedback loop, resulting in chronic destruction instead of adaptive resilience. Cells break down over time and cell division of faulty cells will cause future cancer metabolic dysfunction and a frailty.
Stress management
The design of the world changes and grows to off load the stress of our daily lives but moves away from a healthy lifestyle and creates mine fields of disastrous environmental stressors. I saw a quote describing the millennials' life exposure over the last 30 years. Internet age, pandemic, riots, two wars, one with Russia and one with Iran. We need a way to off load stress before it ruins our health.
Meditation could be an answer. Our thoughts mend our body. It strengthens the mind body connection and rewires the brain. Epigenetic gene expression turns activate genes turning off pro inflammatory pathways and boosting expression which strengthens the immune system and calms the nervous system.
The mind-body connection requires continuous strengthening. Evidence supporting meditation's benefits is piling up at an astounding rate. Meditation literally rewires your brain, making you healthier.
48% reduction in anxiety symptoms from 8-week MBSR program (Khoury et al., 2013).
43% improvement in telomerase activity after 3-month meditation retreat
10-20% lower blood pressure with regular meditation (Brook et al., 2013; AHA Scientific Statement).
31% lower levels of inflammatory marker CRP in mindfulness practitioners (Malarkey et al., 2013).
Increase in gray matter in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex
23% improvement in sleep quality (Black et al., 2015).
These physical changes make the rest of the body function like a well-oiled machine. The immune system, hormones, and metabolism work together to fight inflammation and stress at the cellular level. The brain gets flexible. Adjust better. Chill and quiet. Exceptional wellness is just a thought away, thanks to the many benefits listed above. The best part is that it’s free and requires no medication. Actual self-repairing process.
4-step process to your daily meditation habit
- Anchor. Pair it with something you already do evey day. Maybe your daily cup of coffee or before brushing your teeth.
- Start small. Something like 2-5 minutes and build until you can make it to 10-15 minutes.
- Track and adapt. Log your session and note the mental and emotional shifts.
- Scale from 1-2 times per week to daily.
The nuance in meditation
The one size fits all mantra. The unique human experience underpins the complexity and variation in our brains. It would make sense everyone’s response to different meditation types will vary. There’s motion, mantra and breathing meditation. Neurobiology, trauma and lifestyle demands will determine which type of meditation works for you. What calms one person may agitate another. It’s not about what is right, but doing what is right for you. The key to meditation is this: You are not your thoughts but the awareness observing them. The more you try to control the mind, the more it resists; the more you observe it without judgment, the more it softens and reveals the truth beneath noise.