Meditation Now Backed By Science

A new study, soon to be published in Psychosomatic Medicine, is a significant first step in understanding what goes on in the brain during meditation. The underlying theory is that, in people who are stressed, anxious or depressed, the right frontal cortex of the brain is overactive and the left frontal cortex underactive. Such people sometimes show heightened activation of a key center in the brain for processing fear. By contrast, people who are habitually calm and happy typically show greater activity in the left frontal cortex relative to the right. These people produce less of the stress hormone cortisol, recover faster from negative events and have higher levels of certain immune cells. Each person has a natural ''set point,'' a baseline frontal cortex activity level that is characteristically tipped left or right, and around which daily fluctuations of mood swirl. What meditation may do is nudge this balance in the favorable direction. This study demonstrated that the brains of people who meditate did show a marked shift toward the left frontal lobe, while the non-meditators brains did not, suggesting that meditation may have shifted the ''set point'' to the left. Another conclusion was that meditation may increase the release of serotonin, a calming neurotransmitter in the brain.

The Bottom Line

Will you be healthier 5 years from now than you are today? What could you do that would cause your health to improve over the next 5 years? It's clear that healthy lifestyle decisions that are made today will affect your health in a positive way in the future. What changes can you make---meditation, dietary changes, exercise, stress reduction and control, positive attitude, healthy nervous system.