To stay young as long as possible, you need to train not only the body, but also the brain. It is enough to constantly learn something new — playing a musical instrument, a foreign language. Or meditate, says American neuroscientist Eileen Lueders.
Research on the effect of meditation on our body has been carried out since the invention of MRI. Now scientists know that meditation helps fight depression, panic attacks, alcoholism and drug addiction. It improves concentration and perseverance, increases tolerance for pain. Meditation also slows down the aging process of the brain. This conclusion was reached by neuroscientists from the University of California, led by Eileen Luders.1.
The scientists compared the brains of 50 people who had practiced yoga and meditation for years, and 50 people who had never done it. The age of the participants in the experiment ranged from 24 to 77 years. Men and women were about equal in number.
The brains of 50-year-old subjects who meditated regularly looked about 7 years younger
After studying the data of these two groups using MRI, the researchers found that with age, the amount of gray matter decreases in all subjects. However, among those who actively practiced meditation, it decreased more slowly than among their peers who were not fond of practices. The brains of the 50-year-old participants who meditated regularly looked about 7 years younger in their brain scans. Remarkably, women’s brains looked on average 3 years younger than men’s, regardless of meditation practice.
What is the reason for such an impact of spiritual practice? During meditation, the human brain takes a break from processing an endless stream of data. Even a 10-minute break is enough to reduce the activity of the information processing process. This helps the brain to relax, and the person to quickly concentrate on important tasks. Interestingly, even those who first tried to meditate showed such results.
“We expected this practice to have little effect on some areas of the brain. But they found that meditation has a positive effect on the entire brain, ”says one of the authors of another similar study, Dr. Florian Kurth (Florian Kurth).
As another scientist, German neuroscientist Christian Gazer, explains, meditation stimulates the growth of new brain cells and the connections between them, thus slowing down the aging process.
1. E. Luders «Estimating brain age using high-resolution pattern recognition: Younger brains in long-term meditation practitioners», NeuroImage, 2016, vol. 134.