Have you ever considered the health benefits of meditation?
Sure, it helps you relax, alleviate stress and gives you some “me time”. But have you ever thought about what it REALLY does for you?
Well, we can safely say that meditation has far bigger health benefits than you may have thought. And a new study done by researchers at the University of California in Los Angeles has the reasons why…
The health benefits of meditation include protecting your brain from the damage dementia causes.
Let’s go back to stress and relaxation for a minute.
When you suffer from every day stress and you don’t have time to relax, your body doesn’t know how to handle it.
Your blood fills up with the stress hormone cortisol and, because there’s too much, your body can’t get rid of it quick enough to prevent it from doing damage.
Your tissues suffer the effects and your immune system goes haywire.
Meditation
Instead of switching off, it continues to wreck havoc on your cells and that causes a lot of trouble.
One of the areas this type of chronic stress and accompanied inflammation affects, is your brain.
As you know, when your brain doesn’t get the oxygen andnutrients it needs, it starts failing.
And the first sign of this is you start to lose your memory.
It’s all because protein tangles start forming in your brain due to increased inflammation and the lack of control the normal processes within your brain have because of this inflammation that dementia develops.
So, don’t you think controlling your stress, relaxing and taking some “me time” is the perfect solution?
And that’s where the health benefits of meditation come in.
Meditation is key to your health and is essential in your efforts to prevent dementia
Did you know, as you get older, your brain starts to shrink?
Well, it’s because of the oxidative stress taking place within your body as you age that this happens.
Researchers say comparing the brain of an aged person to that of a younger adult going through chronic stress is almost the same.
That means, inflammation and the damage it does to your brain is inevitable as you get older.
But what if I told you it was avoidable?
It’s true!
If you control your stress and the inflammatory responses in your body, you can protect your brain and prevent dementia. Or at the very least, delay the onset of the first signs of dementia, which is memory loss.
And meditation can have a significantly positive impact.
Health Benefits
Meditation can help ward off the signs of dementia. A couple years ago, the same research team at UCLA, gathered evidence to suggest that people who meditate have lower levels of brain shrinkage than those who don’t meditate. Now, they wanted to build on the first study to show just how important meditation is as part of your daily routine.
In their most recent study, they looked at the brains of 50 people who regularly took part in meditation and compared them to 50 other participants who didn’t meditate.
In the meditation group, they found the participants had fuller grey matter than those in the non-meditator group. And it had nothing to do with the age of the participants either.
It was simply clear to researchers that people who meditate preserve their brain matter, while those who don’t undergo the normal stages of ageing and they lose their brain matter as they do so.
And even the researchers were surprised at how clear the difference was!
That’s why they say, if you don’t meditate yet, it’s never too late to start.
So what does meditation involve?
Reap the health benefits of meditation wherever you are
Forget about the stereotypical image of a Buddhist sitting with his legs crossed, the tips of his finger and thumb touching and his hands resting on his knees.
Meditation has little to do with what you look like and how you pose and more to do with that you do during your meditation time.
In other words, you meditate anywhere, as long as you have a place to quiet your mind and eliminate disturbance.
All you have to do is sit quietly in a space you feel comfortable in. Close your eyes and relax.
For the first few seconds, focus on relaxing your entire body.
Unclench your jaw and smooth out any frown lines.
Now relax your shoulders, unclench your hands and sit comfortably and completely relaxed.
Focus on your breathing and try keep your inhalations as long as your exhalations. Breathe deeply and rhythmically.
Next, clear your mind.
Clear Your Mind
While it may be difficult at first because your thoughts will race between what you need to do at work and everything else you need to accomplish in the day.
Simply acknowledge the thoughts and tell yourself you’ll revisit them later. Then push them away.
All you need is to take ten minutes to meditate every day to keep stress and tension at bay.
This way you’ll not only feel more relaxed throughout the day, but it will alleviate the pressure inflammation puts on your brain and it can be just what you need to prevent dementia.
As you can see, meditation is easy to do no matter where you are. So start spending ten minutes meditating every day to naturally boost your mental health and save your brain.
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