Meditation and Physiological Changes

Meditation is a popular form of stress management. Many people choose it to down-regulate stress and numerous studies have backed this up. 

However, many of the individual studies in this field commonly fail to include an active control group.

Pascoe et. al* then did a meta analysis of 45 of these different studies and included randomised controlled trials comparing meditation interventions compared to an active control on physiological markers of stress.

Here’s what they found:

– All meditation subtypes (focused attention, open-monitoring and automatic self-transcending) reduced systolic blood pressure.

– Focused attention meditations also reduced cortisol and open monitoring meditations also reduced heart rate.

– When all meditation forms were analysed together, meditation reduced cortisol, C-reactive protein, blood pressure, heart rate, triglycerides and tumour necrosis factor-alpha

– Overall, meditation practice leads to decreased physiological markers of stress in a range of populations.

 


*Mindfulness mediates the physiological markers of stress: Systematic review and meta-analysis.

 

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