09
Apr
2018

meditative practices help the body

categories: contemplative computing, contemplative pedagogy

Harvard Study: Clearing Your Mind Affects Your Genes And Can Lower Your Blood Pressure

Richard Knox April 06, 2018 http://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2018/04/06/harvard-study-relax-genes

A new study indicates that people who meditated over an eight-week period had a striking change in the expression of 172 genes that regulate inflammation, circadian rhythms and glucose metabolism. And that, in turn, was linked to a meaningful decrease in their blood pressure.

“This is a major step to overcome the innate bias that has developed in medicine over the last hundred years or so,” says Dr. Herbert Benson, who started promoting what he called “the relaxation response” more than four decades ago. “Going back to penicillin in the 1920s, we have been inexorably dependent on medication, surgery and procedures.”

His goal is to establish the relaxation response and other techniques that calm the brain — yoga, t’ai chi, breathing exercises, repetitive prayer and other meditative practices — as a “third leg” of medical treatment, along with medication and surgical procedures.

Last fall, the American Psychological Association declared the nation has reached a new high point in the nation’s stress quotient. the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association expanded the definition of high blood pressure, raising the number of people considered hypertensive from 72 million to 103 million — nearly half of all adults.
Previous studies of other diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis, have suggested improvement after meditation. But, “this is the first study where we have a nice, clean, clinical read-out,” says Towia Libermann,
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more on meditation in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=meditation
more on mindfulness in this IMS blgo
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mindfulness

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