Nobel Prize-Winning Biologist Explains How Meditation Opens Genetic Fountain Of Youth In Your DNA

Science Editor, Medium

Gene expression is to the human body what computer codes are to programs. Genetics and epigenetics are the blueprints that make us who we are. These blueprints are both permanent (DNA) and under a constant state of revision (epigenetics). This genetic dance controls our physical appearance, our personality, our health — and even how long we live. Our DNA’s genes are contained in microscopic double-spiraled threads called chromosomes, and at the tips of these chromosomes are our telomeres — akin to the plastic tips on the ends of our shoelaces. The healthier our lifestyles are, the longer these protective telomeres are. And the more unhealthy we are, the shorter these protective telomeres get. Effectively, by looking at their length they can tell us how much life we have used and how much life remains inside of us.

Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn is the renowned biologist who won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of how the length of these telomeres is regulated. Her groundbreaking research revealed a biological indicator called telomerase, the enzyme that replenishes our telomeres and protects our genetic heritage. It’s Blackburn’s discovery that led to the first genetic indications of a fountain of youth hiding inside our DNA. If you’ve ever wondered why some sixty-year-olds look and feel like forty-year-olds and why some forty-year-olds look and feel like sixty-year-olds, the answer lies in our telomeres.

In one of their studies, for example, Blackburn and Epel write: “We review data linking telomere length to cognitive stress and stress arousal and present new data linking cognitive appraisal to telomere length. Given the pattern of associations revealed so far, we propose that some forms of meditation may have salutary effects on telomere length by reducing cognitive stress and stress arousal and increasing positive states of mind and hormonal factors that may promote telomere maintenance. Aspects of this model are currently being tested in ongoing trials of mindfulness meditation.”

full article here.

How mindfulness is changing law enforcement

pic. taken from here. 

Why mindfulness?

Living in the moment might seem like a strange thing to teach police officers. But mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) has been the subject of hundreds of studies, showing that it helps decrease stress, pain, anxiety, and depression in medical patients and in other groups. 

More recently, studies have found that mindfulness on the job can help workers to reduce stress, improve communications with the populations served, increase worker safety, and better work performance. 

Goerling is capitalizing on this research to help police officers and other first responders with their performance. He believes that mindfulness training holds the key to many of the goals we as a community have for police—that they learn to treat others with respect and caring, and use restraint when necessary in carrying out their duties.

“Mindfulness opens up the space in which we make decisions—we’re not so linearly focused or so stressed because we are under threat,” he says. “We may still be under threat, but because I’m regulating my stress response and my emotions—anger, fear, and ego, which is a huge problem in our culture—I’m more aware of my options.”

Read the full article: 

How Mindfulness Is Changing Law Enforcement

Meditation is helping police officers to de-escalate volatile situations, improve community relations—and improve their own well-being. 

Changing the Brain's Stressful Habits

source: Psychology Today

written by: Alex Korb, PhD. 

As a neuroscientist, despite my initial incredulity, I came to realize that yoga works not because the poses are relaxing, but because they are stressful.  It is your attempts to remain calm during this stress that create yoga's greatest neurobiological benefit.

Your brain tends to react to discomfort and disorientation in an automatic way, by triggering the physiological stress response and activating anxious neural chatter between the prefrontal cortex and the more emotional limbic system.  The stress response itself increases the likelihood of anxious thoughts, like "Oh god, I'm going to pull something," or "I can't hold this pushup any longer".  And in fact, your anxious thoughts themselves further exacerbate the stress response. 

Interestingly, despite all the types of stressful situations a person can be in (standing on your head, running away from a lion, finishing those TPS reports by 5 o'clock) the nervous system has just one stress response.  The specific thoughts you have may differ, but the brain regions involved, and the physiological response will be the same.  The physiological stress response means an increase in heart rate, breathing rate, muscle tension and elevation of cortisol and other stress hormones.

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