In recent years, meditation has become a social trend. While meditating, although the body appears calm on the surface, the genes in the body undergo dramatic changes.
14% of Americans are trying!Meditation is in vogue
From the late 1970s to the 1990s, various qigong masters came out to teach the exercises in China, and many Chinese people developed the habit of going to the park in the morning to practice exercises. This is the emergence of qigong fever.
Later, Qigong spread from China to the West, such as Falun Gong, which is widely spread all over the world. Most of these qigong and yoga originated from Buddhism. The previous yogis put special emphasis on the improvement of the spirit and spirituality. After it was spread to the West, the spiritual factors were excluded, and only the adjustment of the body was left. This is the most popular yoga that everyone sees now. A little deeper yoga will also emphasize meditation, meditation, training people’s consciousness, rather than just improving the balance of the body.
Meditation is also becoming more and more popular in the West. Some company presidents also practice meditation during their lunch break to improve work efficiency.
The United States did a statistic in 2019, 14% of people in the United States meditate[1]。
Meditation has become a very important social phenomenon. Why does this phenomenon occur, and what are its benefits to people?
Meditation has many benefits and improves the health of the heart and brain
During the new crown epidemic, there are also some studies trying to use meditation to help patients alleviate new crown sequelae or vaccine side effects.
Professors at the University of California, San Francisco realized as early as 2020 that the impact of the new crown on the human body is very large, and it will damage multiple organs of the body at the same time, so many people will suffer from the sequelae of the new crown. Two physicians, Juliet Morgan and Meghan Jobson, began research and found that meditation can help patients recover from symptoms.[2]
In 2021, the World Health Organization also mentioned meditation when discussing the recovery and physiotherapy methods for dealing with the new crown infection. It seems that there is already a certain degree of consensus internationally: Meditation is beneficial for people to recover the side effects of the new crown vaccine and the sequelae of infection. helpful.
Western medical research has 20 to 30 years of experience in meditation, and found that meditation has the following benefits[3]：
1. Activation of specific brain regions;
2. Increase heart rate variability;
3. Inhibit inflammation;
4. Increase the expression of telomerase and affect the aging mechanism of the human body.
In addition, meditation is also helpful for the myocardial damage and cranial nerve side effects caused by the vaccine.
The researchers observed changes in brain activity during meditation through brain imaging and brain wave tests, and found that parts such as the insula and premotor cortex were effectively activated during meditation.
A 2013 study published in The Journal of Social Psychology showed that even 5 minutes of meditation improved heart rate variability – a parameter used in Western medicine , reflecting the elastic change of the interval time of each heartbeat, high heart rate variability indicates strong cardiac regulation ability[4]。
Moreover, there are different stages of meditation, and the meditation experience of the research subjects is also different. For example, the effect of long-term meditation or occasional practitioners is also different.
Human immune genes are significantly up-regulated after meditation
While meditating, the human body appears to be still, but the microscopic level of the human body is undergoing tremendous changes.
A large-scale genomic study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that meditation can activate the human immune system[5]。
In this study, the subjects used a meditation style that emphasized the stimulation of inner thoughts and potentials, rather than physical movement and muscle-skeletal balance.
388 subjects participated in an 8-day meditation practice. The researchers collected them at 4 different time points, 2 time points before meditation, after 8 consecutive days of meditation practice, and 3 months after meditation practice. blood samples for comparison.
The study found that after 8 days of meditation, many genes in the human body were significantly up-regulated, and the range of increase was 2 to 4 times.
After 3 months of meditation, the regulation of some genes returned to close to the level before meditation, but compared with before meditation, there were still some genes that remained elevated. This means that the effect of meditation is long-lasting, and 8 days of meditation practice still has a positive effect after 3 months, which is surprising and surprising.
Meditation activates powerful self-healing genes
The researchers classified genes according to their related roles and found that many of the genes that were most regulated after meditation were related to immunity enhancement and virus resistance.
A total of 220 immune genes were up-regulated, of which 68 were related to interferon and belonged to innate immune mechanisms. 8 days of meditation has a very obvious strengthening effect on the overall immunity of the human body.
This study is to detect and analyze peripheral blood, and the results presented are that meditation has an effect on systemic immunity, not just on a certain organ.
This study also observed that in addition to enhancing the interferon and immune activation responses just mentioned, meditation can also enhance the human body’s ability to catabolize RNA. In this way, if viral RNA invades, the human body can Faster degradation of viral RNA.
The healing effects of meditation on long-term COVID-19 and vaccine side effects
Is meditation effective for patients with long-term symptoms of the new crown or side effects of vaccines? This question involves each patient’s own physical fitness, immune potential and the severity of the disease.
However, we can clearly see that some genes that are very important for regulating the immune system can be adjusted by meditation, including TRIM22, STAT1, STAT2. STAP2 is closely related to interferon, it can be combined with STAT1, combined with the regulator of interferon, affecting innate immunity. TRIM22 also affects the expression of γ-interferon. Meditation has a positive effect on these key genes, so overall, effective meditation and meditation will definitely help people’s recovery.
The study also deliberately compared meditators, mild and severe COVID-19 patients. The researchers used red dots to represent up-regulation of genes related to natural immunity and antiviral mechanisms, and blue to represent down-regulation. The genes of meditators are basically red. In contrast, in people with mild and severe COVID-19, many genes are expressed in blue, indicating severe damage.
Many genes related to anti-virus have been significantly improved. Therefore, in addition to helping recovery, early meditation also has a good effect on preventing infection and severe illness.
Qigong, Tai Chi, etc. also change gene expression
In addition to meditation, studies have found that yoga, tai chi, and qigong can all improve our health on different levels.
A study published in Frontiers in Psychology comprehensively analyzed the effects of yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong on different levels of the human body, including changes in epigenes, gene expression, biomolecules, and neurotrophic factors. Yoga, Tai Chi and Qigong can play a multi-layered role in anti-oxidation, anti-aging, preventing inflammation, cancer, and improving immunity.[6]
The researchers used small-molecule ribonucleic acid (microRNA) to simultaneously detect the expression of multiple genes in yoga practitioners and walkers who listened to relaxing music in a natural environment, and compared them. The conclusion is that yoga practitioners are practicing In the short time after yoga, 97 genes were regulated and their expression increased; in the control group listening to music and walking, 24 genes were increased in expression — 83 genes that were additionally regulated as a result of practicing yoga.
This is not a large-scale study, analyzing only a small number of genes. Now, as gene sequencing technologies become more advanced, it is also hoped to see larger-scale analyses of the effects of these traditional healthcare modalities on gene expression.
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Responsible editor: Li Qingfeng◇
