Meditation - an amazing tool for better cognitive function, longevity and well-being

Hi Friends,

Happy New Year! I hope you’re well. Today I’m going to talk about one of the single most effective things you can do for your health, well-being, and productivity – and it simply involves sitting still with your eyes closed for ten minutes. That’s right, I’m talking about meditation.

Summary:

Starting a meditation practice is one of the best new habits you could possibly form. Just 10-15 minutes a day can improve cognition, sleep, well-being and physical health, and even help stave off aging. There are many guided meditation options that make it easy to start.

Full post:

What is meditation? I’ll discuss a few specific forms, or practices, below, but broadly, meditation is a mental training practice that involves monitoring and regulating attention, perception, emotion, and physiology.

Although large scale research on meditation is still in progress, there are already many impressive findings supporting meditation’s benefits. Here, I’ll give a brief summary (as always), and this article provides a more in-depth review for those seeking it.

Benefits

- Meditation is linked to improved cognitive function – in particular, memory and attention – and brain health. For example, an eight week meditation program improved memory and cognitive blood flow in patients suffering memory loss There is reason to believe this can extend to the general population – for instance, one study found that participants randomly assigned to meditate for 20 minutes a day for just five days exhibited greater performance in a cognitive attention task.

Even more astoundingly, a number of studies have shown a clear and sizable link between meditation and various measures of brain structure. For example, one study found that regular meditators had increased gray matter in both the prefrontal and auditory/sensory cortexes (these are good things) as compared to non-meditators and another found that experienced meditators have increased blood flow in the brain. The prefrontal cortex typically shrinks with age, but in this first study, 50 year-old meditators had the same amount of gray matter as 25 year olds.

Another study took a sample of non-meditators and randomly assigned half of them to meditate over a period of eight weeks (for an average of 27 minutes per day). Those assigned to the meditation condition showed increases in brain thickness, in four different regions. In other words, just a few weeks of meditation caused substantial improvements in brain size. It’s hard to imagine much more powerful scientific evidence than this.

As a result, meditation is attracting increased interest as a potential prophylactic, and treatment, for Alzheimer’s disease but these kinds of positive changes in brain structure should have much broader benefits as well.

- Meditation improves markers of mood, well-being, anxiety and sleep quality. One study found that participants randomly assigned to meditate twenty minutes a day for four weeks exhibited lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, as compared to participants in a relaxation control condition. Another study found that participants assigned to meditate reported better mood, reduced stress, and reduced anxiety and another found that participants in an eight-week combined meditation and yoga program reported increased quality of life and sleep quality - Meditation is associated with improvements on various biomarkers of aging. That’s right, the evidence suggests that meditation literally helps keep you young. One study of adults with subjective cognitive decline asked participants to meditate for 12 minutes a day, for 12 weeks. Significant improvements in telomere length, telomerase activity, and plasma-amyloid levels were observed, and the last of these mediated gains in cognitive function, mood, and sleep. This amazing link between meditation and telomere length – thought to be a key marker of biological age, and correlated with many health outcomes – has been shown in other research, leading one set of authors to conclude that “meditation can help to maintain genomic integrity and (is) of key importance to human health and lifestyle disorders.” Other studies have also shown increased antioxidant activity in regular meditators. - Meditation may improve cardiovascular and metabolic health. One study conducted on Type 2 Diabetes patients revealed substantial reductions in post-prandial (after eating) blood sugar when participants meditated after breakfast , and as I covered in my last blog post, this is a critical driver of long-term health. A meta-analysis showed a link between meditation and lower blood pressure, and research into the effects of meditation on other aspects of cardiovascular disease is ongoing.

Types of meditation and how to get started

Given its wide range of benefits, I hope you’re eager to try meditation. As you get started, or perhaps resume a habit you used to have, the most important thing to keep in mind is: meditation is not a performance. As you go through a session, you will lose focus repeatedly, and this is perfectly normal. Indeed, part of the benefit of meditation comes from being able to notice when you have become distracted and then regaining your focus. So, please do not feel frustrated, or that you are “failing,” if you struggle – this struggle is part of the practice.

There are various forms of meditation and I don’t have the space here to discuss them all. However, here is a brief overview of some of the most popular forms, along with links to short guided meditations that I personally enjoy. I do recommend that most people begin with guided meditations, as it can be very helpful to have a guiding, calming voice, rather than just trying ‘sit with your thoughts,’ at least when you are starting out.

Also, there is not yet clear evidence on the extent to which particular forms of meditation may be ‘better’ than others. I’ll briefly describe my own practice below, but my belief is that you should choose the form of meditation that feels right for you and that as long as you are doing some kind of meditation on a regular basis, you will be getting the majority of the benefit. So, you could try a few of the links below and see what works best for you. You might find that you enjoy some variety, or that particular types of meditation work best for particular situations – or, you might like having a routine that involves doing the same thing every day.

Before describing some of the specific forms of meditation, here are two excellent ‘starter’ meditations, that combine a few different elements. These would be a great place to start a practice, and I still return to these meditations often. Each of these is 8-10 minutes long.

- The first of these guides you through a deep breathing technique. I often like to incorporate this type of breathing into my other meditations. - The second is an excellent starter guided meditation that includes elements of mindfulness and loving-kindness (described below).

Mindfulness meditation: Mindfulness involves paying close attention to something. This is often the breath, but it can also include the sounds around you, or your thoughts and feelings, or doing a body scan where you pay close attention to each part of the body in sequence, among other things. This is perhaps the most common form of meditation and helps you to train focus, and quiet an overactive or distracted mind. In addition to the starter meditations listed above, here are a couple more guided mindfulness meditations you could try:

- Meditation focused on quieting the mind

- Combined breath and body scan mindfulness meditation

(A quick note – some of these meditations involve introductions or summaries that, once you’ve listened to them, you should feel free to skip.)

Mindfulness meditation can also be done unguided. Guided meditations are quite useful when you’re first starting out, and will help you to learn the mindfulness technique. But eventually, you may prefer to meditate on your own. In this case, you can just focus your attention on your breathing, or on the sounds around you, and if thoughts come to mind, simply notice them dispassionately and then return to the object of your focus. You could also put some music on in the background. Here are two tracks that I like:

The first is a little bit more energizing , and the second is very relaxing and something I will sometimes listen to as I work if I feel the need to relax or calm down.

Loving-kindness: Loving-kindness is perhaps less well-known than mindfulness but I personally find it quite helpful. This involves imagining others (or sometimes yourself) and wishing them well. This technique still trains focus, because you are repeating several key phrases over and again, while imagining one specific other, but it is an especially powerful mood booster, and is sometimes the technique that I find the most relaxing if I’m feeling stressed. It is also thought to cultivate positive emotions and empathy for others.

Definitely give this a try, especially if you aren’t quite taking to the mindfulness techniques above. You can think about smiling ‘inside,’ or even for real, as you do this.

Loving-kindness meditation #1

Loving-kindness meditation #2

Mantra: Another form of meditation involves repeating a ‘mantra’, or a specific word or phrase, over and over, while focusing closely on the mantra. This also serves to quiet and focus the mind. I have somewhat less experience with this technique, but I know it is quite popular and is the basis for Transcendental Meditation, which some people report to be quite transformational. You could try a mantra like “I have enough”, or "love and happiness."

There are also some excellent meditation apps out there. I have not tried them all, but one that I have recently started using and recommend is Insight Timer (iOS and Android). You can try it for free and it has an incredible wealth of meditations available, falling into all the categories described above, and more, and of a wide range of different lengths.

My own experiences

I came to meditation almost 15 years ago, as I was struggling with some anxiety issues likely linked to my compromised digestive health. I have tried various forms, and currently meditate for 10-15 minutes daily, mostly using the tracks posted above. After meditating, I almost always feel greater calm, well-being and focus. Furthermore, I’ve noticed long-term effects in terms of reduced ‘reactivity’ to stressful or frustrating experiences – I’m more aware of my emotions and thus notice when I’m starting to get irritated and can mitigate the anger response.

How long do I need to meditate for?

There isn't yet clear evidence on the optimal length for meditation sessions. Most of the studies use lengths between 10 and 25 minutes. My own sense is that even 5 minutes can still be helpful, and that a sweet spot comes at around 12-15 minutes, but this is purely anecdotal. If you have trouble carving 15 minutes out of the day, or just can’t sit still for that long at first, you should feel free to start with shorter lengths!

It is also possible to meditate for much longer periods of time, which I try to do on occasion, and which can potentially provide a real break from the ‘ego’ or constant chatter in one’s mind. For those seeking to go deeper into meditation, one app to check out is ‘Waking Up’

I strongly encourage you to give meditation a try. With all the great guided meditations and apps that are out there, it has never been easier; and, with the level of distraction and stress that exists in the current era, it has perhaps never been more important. To your health!

Gavin

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