Research analysis on Meditation may switch Brain to reverse Ageing

Many people believe that chronological age is the most important indicator of illness and death.  However, when it comes to the development of health problems and mortality, there is a great deal of individual variance.  Therefore, identifying indicators of biological age and the variables influencing them is essential from a scientific and therapeutic standpoint.  Telomere length (TL) is one such indicator.  TL can predict cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk variables at any age, albeit it tends to decline with age.  Additionally, people with age-related diseases including diabetes and atherosclerosis have shorter telomeres.

Telomere shortening appears to be influenced by stress.  The correlations between TL, stress levels, and stress-related thoughts will be examined in this talk, along with the potential effects of mindfulness meditation and its potential advantages when used independently of stress.  Longer life expectancies are contributing to an increase in dementia and age-related cognitive impairment, which is posing a growing challenge to healthcare systems. meditation seems to support notable enhancements in brain health, improving cognitive performance and general mental wellness.  Meditation has been associated with structural alterations in both gray and white matter, according to MRI studies

Increased neural synchronization and coherence may result from mindfulness meditation.  According to some experts, these benefits are linked to better sleep efficiency and quality.  Researchers discovered modest evidence that mindfulness meditation enhances sleep quality in a survey of 2210 records have been found

 Studies show that people who go on a 4-day meditation practice often sleep better and longer, and these benefits can last up to 20 days. This backs up other research that shows meditation has a positive impact on how people sleep. To look at brain function, we checked 45 people before the retreat and 34 after. We studied how well their brains worked and how they felt a week before and three weeks after the retreat. We used tests from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox Cognition and Emotion Batteries. The National Institute on Aging says these tests are very reliable. We focused on parts of thinking that don't change much over time and parts that can change, which we could do on an iPad during a Zoom call. The brain tests took about 40 to 55 minutes, while the feeling tests took about 10 minutes. People did all the tests at once. We asked them to take the tests at the same time before and after the retreat to make sure the results were fair.

The primary researchers noted that those who meditated had lower "brain age" computations than those who did not, which are based on neural patterns during non-REM sleep.  In some cases, the difference was ten years or longer.  This suggests a direct link between regular meditation and preserving or perhaps enhancing brain function.

impact of telomere shortening:  The following possible confounding factors were pre-specified:  with an emphasis on the factors that need to be taken into account and  Only the factors that influenced both the exposure and  The result (brain age index) and the method (meditation) were classified as  regarded as confusing factors.  These perplexing factors comprised age, sex (male or female), and degree of education (high).  Graduate, college, and school), as well as race (African, Black, or Asian).  Multiracial, White, American, or Other.  Assuming that the  The sample for meditation included only individuals who identified  Since they weren't Hispanic, ethnicity wasn't considered a complicating factor.  

Prolonged stress and constructive coping : Many people in contemporary society are coping with one or more chronic stresses in their lives, such as interpersonal, career, financial, or caregiving difficulties.  What coping strategies do people employ to keep a pleasant attitude and positive affect?  In certain situations, the unpleasant feelings connected to an unsatisfactory outcome can spur constructive improvements while coping with long-term challenges.  Meaning-focused coping strategies, like those that rely on significant objectives and values, are motivated by negative moods.

Stress and cell aging or death's psychological effects: Since telomere preservation is crucial for cell longevity and, it seems, human lifespan, it's critical to identify the relationship between psychological function and this longevity system.  First, we looked at whether young, healthy women who experienced long-term stress had shorter telomeres than those who did not.  We discovered that lower telomere length was associated with both subjective stress (years of caring) and objective stress. 16  Similar correlations between controls and dementia caregivers have been observed.  Since then, other researchers have discovered that people with significant depression and those from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds have shorter telomeres. 11.  Therefore, there seems to be a correlation between increased telomere shortening and stressful living conditions, stress evaluations, and severe suffering.

The mindfulness technique.:  In order to formally practice mindfulness meditation, one must intentionally focus on their experience in the here and now while maintaining an attitude of acceptance and open inquiry. 80  To allow the body to rest and the mind to stay focused, it is recommended to sit erect with little movement and with your eyes open or closed.  A preset object is the focus of attention, typically localized breathing sensations like those at the tip of the nose (external stimuli, such an image, can also be utilized).  Inexperienced practitioners typically report that their attention is diverted from the intended object after a little length of time by ideas, feelings, sounds, or bodily sensations.

People that scored high in trait mindfulness exhibited more prefrontal cortical control/ regulation of the affects they were labeling and less activity in the bilateral amygdala (and the amygdala is implicated in negative affective states) in the affect labeling condition compared to there active labels comparison condition. Furthermore, people that scored high in trait mindfulness exhibited negative correlations between areas of the prefrontal cortex and right amygdala when they were comparing the two conditions.  

These findings suggest some neural substrates that may underlie parts of the "reperceiving" process, when consciousness shifts from identifying with an emotion to being conscious of that emotion. The difference in cognition may serve to disrupt, or inhibit, automatic, affective activity, which diminishes the intensity and duration.

Approaches to handling distractions differ - you could silently categorize the object (e.g., anger, anticipation, sound), use the nondescript name "thinking" for a thought, or simply not make any mental label at all. It is believed that labeling an experience builds re-cognition of that experience, therefore it may be useufl for some or if the distraction is pronounced. Distraction and return to the present is repeated consistently in formal mindfulness practices, where the idea is to build an awareness of present experience to ever-more subtle levels and to strengthen stability of attention. The idea is not to avoid or "get rid" of thought to have a "blank" mind but to notice, with full attention, anything that arises. This way, there are no distractions, any object of attention can be observed once it is noticed as part of the field of awareness. Ironically, sometimes to observe thinking or a thought that you would rather avoid can become painful, so in this way, the practice creates the willingness to endure discomfort and represents an attempt to strengthen avoidance.

Meditation for analyzing attentive mind: Meditation training has also been shown to decrease elaborative processing of previous stimuli while freeing up attentional resources in the present moment.92 Attentional resource deployment, as measured by an attentional-blink task, was better after a 3-month intensive mindfulness-based meditation retreat compared to controls.

Scalp recorded brain potentials revealed that brain-resources devoted to the first target in a rapid stream of stimuli were diverted thus making more of them resources available for identification of the second target. Enhanced attention-related processes are theorized to enable earlier detection of potential stressor(s) and increase likelihood of effective coping being activated sooner. 

Increased awareness of present-moment experience might also disrupt ruminative thought processes that contribute to longer reactivity to stressors and risk of developing mental illness. Emotional reactivity Mindfulness is theorized to enhance emotion regulation abilities by developing awareness of emotions, increasing (an internal) willingness to undergo and accept distressing or uncomfortable emotions, and decreasing the likelihood or speed of emotional reactivity to provocative situations and emotions.

Meditation enhances Heart Rate Variability (HRV) This is the longest segment of my blog and I am concerned I will lose you, so for that reason here is the one graph that can convince any researcher or non-researcher the effect of meditation on HRV is dramatic. The graph is from a team of researchers at Harvard Medical School: Exaggerated heart rate oscillations in two meditative practices Heart Rate Variability - HRV- refers to the "beat-to-beat" change in heart rate. It is NOT a measure of heart rate. While a LOW heart rate is a measure of health, HIGH heart rate variability is a marker of health. As of 2023, there have been over 17,895 PubMed research articles on the topic of HRV and the body of evidence backing up how relevant this health biomarker is simply getting more robust. For instance, looking at a subset of patients within the Framingham Heart Study, which started over 40 years ago, the independent predictive value of HRV was used to identify "all cause mortality".

Mindfulness and metacognition : A fundamental change in the relationship to thoughts and other objects of awareness is regarded as a primary, key process of mindfulness training. This process is metacognitive and has been referred to as decentering and reperceiving. We have used the term reperceiving, which is defined as a “shift in perspective in that what was previously ‘subject’ becomes ‘object’” whereby consciousness is not simply awareness of a thought, but rather a more expansive awareness of thought, positionality, and consciousness together. This shift in perspective, we theorize, allows for the insight of “I am not that thought” which permits more flexibility in responding to thought or any experience as it happens. This insight is proposed to have many salutary effects for psychological functioning elaborated below. We believe this is a key process for defusing stress cognitions (described in detail below - under appraisal and rumination sections). Mindful states of consciousness are not limited to formal meditation practice and are proposed to reside in daily activities. Since mindfulness is considered an innate quality of human consciousness, people (even those without formal training) are presumed to exhibit variability in the degree/amount they employ mindfulness as a conscious trait.

Therefore, non-meditators have been used to generate self-report measures of dispositional mindfulness 85, 86.  Research on the effects of mindfulness training has mostly focused on three areas: a) comparing experienced meditators to controls, b) using brief inductions of mindfulness in laboratory settings, or c) utilizing Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) 87 or variations of this program designed to meet the needs of particular populations. The results of these studies are highlighted below.

The idea that mindfulness improves awareness of emotional processes and, thereby improves affect regulation, seems having some merit regarding three studies that reacted to emotional stimuli. One study had subjects respond to labels of emotions on human faces while subjects were have their brain activity measured in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).  

Conclusion: While stress cognitions are necessary for survival, they can also be detrimental to cellular longevity if they are founded on false impressions and encourage excessive stress arousal.  These proceedings are based on the lifespan conference, which found that meaningful conduct is often driven by emotions based on analysis and reason.  On the other hand, feelings that stem from "false projections" or fear-based ideas are detrimental to longevity.  We hypothesize that some meditation practices can raise awareness of present-moment experiences, which in turn can lead to positive cognitions. This is mainly due to the fact that they improve meta-cognitive awareness of thought, a sense of control (and a lessened urge to control), and an increased acceptance of emotional experiences.  By lowering cognitive stress, these mental states and abilities enable more accurate assessments, which in turn lessen excessive threat assessments.