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.
