edited by katie barnes. email:
katiebarnes@leisuremedia.com research round-up
Meditation may have long-term implications for health and could help delay the ageing process, according to new research
stop the clock I
t’s well documented that meditation leads to improvements in perception and wellbeing. Small trials involving short courses of
meditation have also indicated that it can influence physical responses such as lowering blood pressure, slowing disease progression in HIV patients and improving the immune response in cancer patients. Now research from the Shamatha
Project – the most comprehensive long-term study of intensive meditation to date* – is the fi rst to link positive wellbeing with cellular ageing.
three-month retreats The Shamatha Project, which focused on 60 meditators, was co-ordinated by Clifford Saron, a neuroscientist at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, US. Half of the participants attended a
three-month retreat in the spring of 2007, while the other half, a control group, abstained from meditating at that time. The groups switched places in the autumn. While at the retreat, participants
took part in meditation sessions for about six hours a day. They practised a mix of mindfulness meditation, in which people are aware of their own thoughts and surroundings, and compassion meditation, in which people extend feelings of love and kindness to others. Over the three months, the groups
were subjected to a variety of tests, mostly looking at the control of emotions and changes in cognitive function. Yet Elissa Epel, a psychologist from the University of California, San Francisco, was also interested in fi nding out what impact the meditation had on telomeres. Telomeres are DNA structures at the
end of chromosomes, which shorten every time a cell divides. When they fall
Activities that increase your sense of wellbeing may impact on your physiology
below a certain length, the cell cannot divide and eventually dies. This cell loss causes wrinkling and ageing. An enzyme called telomerase, however, can rebuild and lengthen telomeres.
meditation effect Epel found that, at the end of the three- month retreat, telomerase activity was one-third higher in the white blood cells of participants on the retreat compared to those in the control group. In an article in UK newspaper The Observer, Epel said that in theory this could stop and maybe even reverse cellular ageing: “If the increase in telomerase is sustained long enough, it’s logical to infer that this group would develop more stable and possibly longer telomeres over time.” At the retreat, the psychological state
of participants was also assessed. Three psychological qualities in particular resulted in higher telomerase activity:
a higher feeling of perceived control (over life and surroundings); an increased sense of having a purpose in life; and decreased neurotic feelings such as being anxious, tense or in a bad mood. Saron concludes: “The take-home
message is not that meditation directly increases telomerase activity and therefore a person’s health and longevity. Rather, meditation may improve a person’s psychological wellbeing, and in turn these changes are related to telomerase activity in immune cells, which has the potential to promote longevity in those cells. “Activities that increase a person’s
sense of wellbeing may have a profound effect on the most fundamental aspects of physiology.” To that effect, simply doing something
we enjoy or which makes us feel less stressed – whether that’s meditating, exercising, gardening, reading or painting – may help us age well and live longer.
*Jacobs TL, et al. Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity and psychological mediators. Psychoneuroendocrinology (2010). 70 Read Health Club Management online
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