A study looking at how transcendental meditation affects genetic expression found that this popular form of mediation suppressed the activation of genes associated with stress responses.
Okay, no surprise there—mediation is a calming, relaxing activity. However, the authors report evidence that the same genes found to be associated in stress response have been newly associated with accelerated hallmarks of aging, suggesting that transcendental mediation may also slow the aging process.
Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years, even before the establishment of major religious orders. Entering trancelike states through sitting, consuming psychedelic compounds, or through vigorous activity like dance, predates the established meditational practices of South Asian mysticism and Western hermitage culture.
Today, meditation is practiced across a wide spectrum of beliefs ranging from the entirely atheistic and rational to the deeply spiritual, and from people seeking marginal health benefits as well as those seeking enlightenment.
As surely as Buddha taught it was the key to the latter, modern medical science shows it to be one way to achieve the former.
Acting on various neurophysiological systems, like the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, and the “conserved transcriptional response to adversity profile,” regulation of genes through meditation can dampen the human organism’s stress response that is correlated with a host of negative health outcomes from accelerated aging to cardiovascular disease risk.
Faculty at the Maharishi International University in Iowa conducted a study recently that divided a cohort into 4 groups of white students and locals in Fairfield where the university is located. With each group containing 25 participants, the study included young (20-32) practitioners of transcendental meditation, young non-practitioners, old (55-72) practitioners, and old non-practitioners.
In the young meditation group, 13 of 15 genes selected as proxies for stress and aging were downregulated versus the control group, while in the old cohort it was 7 out of 15. Additional examinations included evidence of better cogitative ability among the older practitioners compared to the old controls, and higher mental processing speed.
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Resistance to cognitive decline, therefore, seemed another benefit of long-term transcendental meditation practice.
“To summarize the data on reduced gene expression in the [meditation] group, the association of these genes with healthy aging through their roles in controlling inflammation, energy metabolism and mitochondrial function, stability of nuclear DNA, and other key cell functions is clear,” the authors conclude in their paper, published in Biomolecules. “Increased expression of these genes is connected with a number of age-related diseases.”
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Transcendental meditation involves the silent repetition of a mantra or sound, and is practiced for 15–20 minutes twice per-day.
It has been used in scientific literature for decades as a proxy for meditation as a whole because of its uniformity in practice, but there’s reason to suspect that other forms of meditation, like mindfulness, Zen, or others with long anecdotal histories of benefit, would create similar benefits.
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