With evidence growing that training the mind or inducing certain modes of consciousness can have positive health effects, researchers have sought to understand how these practices physically affect the body. A new study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain, and France reports the first evidence of specific molecular changes in the body following a period of intensive mindfulness practice.
The study investigated the
effects of a day of intensive mindfulness practice in a group of experienced
meditators, compared to a group of untrained control subjects who engaged in
quiet non-meditative activities. After eight hours of mindfulness practice, the
meditators showed a range of genetic and molecular differences, including
altered levels of gene-regulating machinery and reduced levels of
pro-inflammatory genes, which in turn correlated with faster physical recovery
from a stressful situation.
“To the best of our knowledge,
this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within
subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice,” says study author
Richard J. Davidson, founder of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and
the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Most interestingly, the
changes were observed in genes that are the current targets of
anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs,” says Perla Kaliman, first author of the
article and a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Research of Barcelona,
Spain (IIBB-CSIC-IDIBAPS), where the molecular analyses were conducted.
The study was published in
the Journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Mindfulness-based trainings
have shown beneficial effects on inflammatory disorders in prior clinical
studies and are endorsed by the American Heart Association as a preventative
intervention. The new results provide a possible biological mechanism for
therapeutic effects.
Gene Activity Can Change
According To Perception
According to Dr. Bruce
Lipton, gene activity can change on a daily basis. If the perception in your
mind is reflected in the chemistry of your body, and if your nervous system
reads and interprets the environment and then controls the blood’s chemistry,
then you can literally change the fate of your cells by altering your thoughts.
In fact, Dr. Lipton’s
research illustrates that by changing your perception, your mind can alter the
activity of your genes and create over thirty thousand variations of products
from each gene. He gives more detail by saying that the gene programs are
contained within the nucleus of the cell, and you can rewrite those genetic
programs through changing your blood chemistry.
In the simplest terms, this
means that we need to change the way we think if we are to heal cancer. “The
function of the mind is to create coherence between our beliefs and the reality
we experience,” Dr. Lipton said. “What that means is that your mind will adjust
the body’s biology and behavior to fit with your beliefs. If you’ve been told
you’ll die in six months and your mind believes it, you most likely will die in
six months. That’s called the nocebo effect, the result of a negative thought,
which is the opposite of the placebo effect, where healing is mediated by a
positive thought.”
That dynamic points to a
three-party system: there’s the part of you that swears it doesn’t want to die
(the conscious mind), trumped by the part that believes you will (the doctor’s
prognosis mediated by the subconscious mind), which then throws into gear the
chemical reaction (mediated by the brain’s chemistry) to make sure the body
conforms to the dominant belief. (Neuroscience has recognized that the
subconscious controls 95 percent of our lives.)
Now what about the part that
doesn’t want to die–the conscious mind? Isn’t it impacting the body’s chemistry
as well? Dr. Lipton said that it comes down to how the subconscious mind, which
contains our deepest beliefs, has been programmed. It is these beliefs that
ultimately cast the deciding vote.
“It’s a complex situation,”
said Dr. Lipton. People have been programmed to believe that they’re victims
and that they have no control. We’re programmed from the start with our mother
and father’s beliefs. So, for instance, when we got sick, we were told by our
parents that we had to go to the doctor because the doctor is the authority
concerning our health. We all got the message throughout childhood that doctors
were the authority on health and that we were victims of bodily forces beyond
our ability to control. The joke, however, is that people often get better
while on the way to the doctor. That’s when the innate ability for self-healing
kicks in, another example of the placebo effect.
Mindfulness Practice
Specifically Affects Regulatory Pathways
The results of Davidson’s
study show a down-regulation of genes that have been implicated in
inflammation. The affected genes include the pro-inflammatory genes RIPK2 and
COX2 as well as several histone deacetylase (HDAC) genes, which regulate the
activity of other genes epigenetically by removing a type of chemical tag.
What’s more, the extent to which some of those genes were downregulated was
associated with faster cortisol recovery to a social stress test involving an
impromptu speech and tasks requiring mental calculations performed in front of
an audience and video camera.
Biologists have suspected for
years that some kind of epigenetic inheritance occurs at the cellular level. The
different kinds of cells in our bodies provide an example. Skin cells and brain
cells have different forms and functions, despite having exactly the same DNA.
There must be mechanisms–other than DNA–that make sure skin cells stay skin
cells when they divide.
Perhaps surprisingly, the
researchers say, there was no difference in the tested genes between the two
groups of people at the start of the study. The observed effects were seen only
in the meditators following mindfulness practice. In addition, several other
DNA-modifying genes showed no differences between groups, suggesting that the
mindfulness practice specifically affected certain regulatory pathways.
The key result is that
meditators experienced genetic changes following mindfulness practice that were
not seen in the non-meditating group after other quiet activities — an outcome
providing proof of principle that mindfulness practice can lead to epigenetic
alterations of the genome.
Previous studies in rodents
and in people have shown dynamic epigenetic responses to physical stimuli such
as stress, diet, or exercise within just a few hours.
“Our genes are quite dynamic
in their expression and these results suggest that the calmness of our mind can
actually have a potential influence on their expression,” Davidson says.
“The regulation of HDACs and
inflammatory pathways may represent some of the mechanisms underlying the
therapeutic potential of mindfulness-based interventions,” Kaliman says. “Our
findings set the foundation for future studies to further assess meditation
strategies for the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions.”
Subconscious Beliefs Are Key
Too many positive thinkers
know that thinking good thoughts–and reciting affirmations for hours on
end–doesn’t always bring about the results that feel-good books promise.
Dr. Lipton didn’t argue this
point, because positive thoughts come from the conscious mind, while
contradictory negative thoughts are usually programmed in the more powerful
subconscious mind.
“The major problem is that
people are aware of their conscious beliefs and behaviors, but not of
subconscious beliefs and behaviors. Most people don’t even acknowledge that
their subconscious mind is at play, when the fact is that the subconscious mind
is a million times more powerful than the conscious mind and that we operate 95
to 99 percent of our lives from subconscious programs.
“Your subconscious beliefs
are working either for you or against you, but the truth is that you are not
controlling your life, because your subconscious mind supersedes all conscious
control. So when you are trying to heal from a conscious level–citing
affirmations and telling yourself you’re healthy–there may be an invisible
subconscious program that’s sabotaging you.”
The power of the subconscious
mind is elegantly revealed in people expressing multiple personalities. While
occupying the mind-set of one personality, the individual may be severely
allergic to strawberries. Then, in experiencing the mind-set of another personality,
he or she eats them without consequence.
The new science of
epigenetics promises that every person on the planet has the opportunity to
become who they really are, complete with unimaginable power and the ability to
operate from, and go for, the highest possibilities, including healing our
bodies and our culture and living in peace.
Article sources:
wisc.edu
brucelipton.com
ts-si.org
Michael Forrester is a
spiritual counselor and is a practicing motivational speaker for corporations
in Japan, Canada and the United States.
Source: preventdisease.com
Read more
http://www.tunedbody.com/scientists-finally-show-thoughts-can-cause-specific-molecular-changes-genes/
